The Botched Marriage Ch. 06

CHAPTER 6. THE VIDEO.

Around noon, Ms. Marie showed up to pick up the kids. Rather than switch all the car seats, she just took our car and left hers on our driveway. She didn't ask about my mysterious illness, and I didn't explain. Nor did she ask about Danny's car being on the driveway. She seemed happy enough to just borrow the kids and having them to herself for a while. She didn't even say if she was going to share them with Mr. Kyle at all. She just drove too fast down our driveway and peeled down the street. Like she was getting away with something. I would have laughed if I had a laugh in me.

When I came in, Danny was waiting for me in the kitchen with a DVD in his hand.

"Danny, I do very much want to talk about this now, but I don't want to watch that DVD. Not now, probably not ever. I don't want to hide from what happened. I don't think that's a fair request of you, since you had to go through it and it hurt you. But please, if there is any part of you that thinks watching that video is something you are doing for us, you are not. As far as I'm concerned, please just destroy it. Destroy every copy of that video and lets never ever look at it."

Dan walked past me as he headed towards the den, DVD still in hand.

He turned his head to me as he pushed the disc into the DVD player, that wicked, weird smile I had seen last night in the car showed up again.

"Carrie, you said making this video would improve our sex lives. That it would make our marriage stronger. That the whole experience would take our marriage to the next level. Were you lying then? Was it just an excuse to get the big black cock you wanted?"

"Dan, please, I don't deserve your forgiveness. I am not even asking for that right now. I know I have to earn it and I'm totally willing to sit down and discuss how I will do that, even if takes me the rest of my life. But I'm asking you to give us a chance to fight through this. We should not watch this video. I can see I've hurt you enough. Please baby listen to me."

I was openly weeping now.

He looked up at me then, with shame, sadness, and something else. Regret?

"I already looked at the whole two-and-a-half-hour thing, Carrie. I've seen the whole long video twice now to make the first cuts. I boiled it down to 48 high-quality minutes. I watched that twice while making even better cuts. And then I must have watched those cuts four or five times each as I assembled the video. It's a 28-minute movie now. I'm going to be honest, I'm kind of proud of it. Will you watch it with me? It's really... amazing. I could barely sleep last night -- I ended up watching it several times after I finished it."

"You shouldn't have done that, baby. I'm really sure that's not good for you."

"Actually, I think watching the video is exactly what we need to do."

"Danny, why are you even doing this? Is it to punish me? You have a right to punish me and I deserve to be punished. You have every right. I want you to punish me. If this is my punishment then fine. I will watch it as much as you want. But please don't you watch it anymore. This can't be good for you. It's gotten inside of you. If you want to punish me then make me watch it alone."

Of course, it was to punish me. And I was angry about it, too, a little bit. Not because I was opposed to being punished -- that part was fine. Maybe even a bit thrilling. And it wasn't that I didn't yet understand how big of a fuck up this had turned out to be. I got that part. I was an absolute clusterfuck.

But I was still a bit angry that it had gone so far south. It felt disproportionate. Danny sounded like a different person. He was talking like our past had been erased. I felt like he was discounting a lifetime of absolute loyalty over one night. One night he had agreed to, however reluctantly. One night he had been a part of.

But I'm not a total idiot. I was not going to argue about one damned thing at that point. I knew full well our relationship was on the line that day, the whole thing. If I showed any hint of anger, or defended myself in any way, I felt things could turn explosively bad. So, I swallowed my anger down and kept begging. It didn't help anyway.

"Carrie, I don't know if this is a punishment or not. I imagine you think I'm trying to get back at you. Make you feel guilty for what you did to me by forcing me to sit in that room and watch you get fucked by a better man for two hours."

Better?? I tried to jump in then, but he cut me off.

"Let me finish. Better is how I feel about it. You can't change that. This is not a debate. I will not censor myself to protect you, Carrie. Not anymore. Not after the degree and method of honesty you have used against me. I want to be clear with you, love of my life, what you did was cruel. You punished me too, last night. You punished me for the years you were forced to pretend to be satisfied by an inadequate man. You punished me for years of faking orgasms, faking arousal, faking submission. You punished me for wasting all the best years of your life on me..."

"NO!!!"

I collapsed on my knees, shaking, a blubbering mess of tears and despair. How could he say these things? Where were they coming from?

"Danny, NO!! Please I beg you. On my knees I beg you to listen. None of that is true. None of that is true at all. What you are saying is crazy."

He didn't seem to be listening. He was looking at me but there was nothing in his face that seemed to react to my words at all.

"You think I was faking my orgasms? Wasting the best years of my life?? What the fuck Danny? I have not faked a single orgasm in my whole life. Not one. I wouldn't even know how to do it because you and I taught each other how to make love. We both learned to make each other happy, every time, together. You are my whole life, always have been -- I live the life every woman envies because of you. Danny -- you are not well. I swear to God what you are saying does not make any sense."

He looked at me like I was telling an absurd lie.

"Danny, please," I said, as I scrambled on my knees towards him. I wanted to grab him. Shake him, Make him hear me "I am at a fault for all the horrible ways you feel right now, and I will gladly pay. I am ready to pay, but please hear me. Please listen. None of that is true."

"Get up, Carrie."

I looked up. The tone cut me off mid sob. It was cold. Vicious. Not Danny.

"Get up. Stop crying. We are going to watch this video so you can understand what I am talking about. So that you understand it from my perspective. So that you can see the truth, the way I can see it. So you can stop fucking calling me crazy when I was there! I was there, you fucking..."

He stopped. Even I stopped, even though tears were still running down my face.

He didn't do it, but he had wanted to. Danny had never insulted me in anger. When we were joking around, we would sometimes be pretty crude, but of course that was all games. Even during sex, when I actually loved being called names, he was reluctant.

This was the closest he had ever come. Just another sign that our little world had changed.

He took a deep breath and continued. "Perhaps the disconnect is that I was there with eyes wide open and you were totally lost in lust and pleasure. This video condenses the reality I saw into just 28 minutes. You can give me 28 more minutes of your life can't you? We've been friends, soulmates and lovers for close to 28 years, what is 28 more minutes, Carrie? After that, perhaps you will see as clearly as I do that you don't need to sacrifice any further for me."

I disintegrated again then, just as I had gathered enough composure to try to get up. I stumbled, found myself back on my knees again, crying my eyes out as I looked up at him, desperate to touch him.

He looked at me with undisguised contempt.

"You are being a coward, Carrie. I can barely recognize you. You got your grand revenge against me, if that's what that was. Or maybe it was just anger, or disappointment built over a whole lifetime. Whatever it was, you did it. You showed me. As painful as it was, I don't really blame you for it. I get it. It must have been hell on earth for so many years to pretend to love me. Hell on earth for 3 hours is not a big deal in that context. Fine."

I could not respond. I was just sobbing on the floor, shaking my head no, spit and mucus running down my chin onto the floor, just a few feet away from where I had tried to let him facefuck me into agreeing to this mess. How deliciously ironic.

"What I don't understand is this crying act."

He paced around me a bit, looking at me like I was a strange specimen he'd found by the stream.

"Or maybe it's not an act. Or maybe you are just trying to fuck with me? maybe this is just more cruelty and revenge? I really don't know. And I can't get your help in making heads or tails of it if you are crying and blubbering like that."

I tried to say something, but huge raking sobs took over and all I got out was a long wail. How could he act this way? Did he believe the insanity that was coming out of his mouth?

"Look, you think I'm not devastated? You think I'm not scared? You think I'm not hurt? I never asked you to stay with me all those years. I did not force you. You chose to be with me. I'm sorry that you felt trapped in it and that this anger built inside for so many years, but what you did was cruel. You should have just left me decades ago."

I crawled towards him, breathing deeply to try to calm myself. I needed to get a hold of myself and try to understand what was really happening here.

"Baby please, help me," I said, my voice shaking. "I promise I will do my best to stop sobbing. I will do my best. I just need to know what you are really saying. Please, can you answer a few questions? I'm not trying to trap you or set you up. I just need to hear what you are saying in words I can understand."

"Sure," he said. "I wanted to start with the video because I think it will make it easier to talk about this, but this will work too. Go ahead."

I centered myself, one long breath after the next.

"Danny, do you love me?"

"Yes. I told you this morning. Always and forever. That has never changed and I'm afraid it might never change. Not even now."

Afraid it might never change?

Oh it was me enjoying the rocks in my stomach now, wasn't it?

"Danny, do I love you?"

He hesitated. "Yes. At some level, I guess, I'm still the love of your life. Or I was. Until the disappointment and frustration became too strong. I guess I really don't know Carrie. I'm sorry."

I balled my hands into fists then, because I couldn't stop. I needed to hold it together.

"Danny, have I ever loved you?"

He smiled then. His real smile. And his eyes filled with tears, and it was all I could do not to scream in agony at how beautiful he was.

"Yes."

"Say more, baby, please. When did I ever love you. When do you think I stopped."

"I told you. I don't know. I know you loved me when we were young. I know you loved me the first time we made love." His tears were streaming down his face now. "I know that night, you were mine, body and soul. Always and forever."

It took all his strength to get those three last words out. He collapsed to his knees then, a few feet from me, sobbing openly into his hands.

We both sobbed. Just a few feet apart, on the carpet we had installed as a team, in our den, in our home. But not together. We were so far away, I was afraid to even try to touch him.

I eventually worked up the nerve and crawled towards him slowly. "Always and forever, Danny. You remember."

He was up in a flash and on his feet, out of reach. Those wrestling instincts were still there.

"Any more questions, my darling?" That crazy, cruel smile was back.

"Yes. One more. A big one. When you say, right now, that I only love you at some level. Can you tell me what that level is? I fear I know what you will say, but I need to know, exactly."

"That's what the video is for, Carrie. To show you, so I don't have to tell you and then have you deny or gaslight me. The video shows the truth."

I took a deep breath. I knew I needed to be strong and that I needed to play ball here. Princess Carrie was dead. The girl who got her way from Danny in everything died last night. I guess I killed her.

This was now, not then. I'm now whore Carrie. Whore Carrie doesn't always get her way. She has to play ball and play it well. She has to compromise.

"If you give me the video and let me watch it by myself on my laptop, I will go do it right now without another complaint. No crying, no begging. I will not say another word. I will just go, watch it, and come back to talk about it like an adult when I'm done."

We stared at each other. I was trembling, but I held his gaze.

He nodded. Five minutes later, locked in our bedroom with my headphones on, I watched the video.

28 MINUTES.

I have to start by saying, the video was amazingly well done. I had no idea Danny had that particular talent. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. But the video was amazing in every way. The shots were creative, compelling, well composed. The editing was flawless. The quality was almost professional. If he uploaded it to a porn site, I bet it would be the highest quality amateur video of the month, maybe the year. It does not matter of course, but I can't not say it. Danny is amazing, and despite the pain and horror of that day, I could not help but admire his work.

The video itself started with a scattershot of brief outtakes I didn't even know had been taken. Making a profile on a site, talking to Tyson that first time in the study, getting dressed for the evening, deliberately taking deep breaths in the car on the way over. It set up the scene perfectly in just one minute. Then it was another long minute of my legs and ass, strolling across the hotel carpet, through the lobby, up the elevator, down the hall. Then it went dark and it slowly brings in audio of Tyson and I kissing. The volume fades in first. Then a blurry image, getting sharper as the kissing obviously intensifies. The kissing scene goes on for a long 3 minutes, as I melt into Tyson's arms and he greedily gropes my ass and pulls me into him by my waist and hips. It's a scene of contrasts, breaking repeatedly between Tyson's huge groping hands on my ass, our soulful, deep French kissing, and my nervous glances at the camera. It captured the nervousness and passion of the moment perfectly, not just from my side, but also Danny's side, as he watched me be touched, explored, and groped by another man.

It had only been five minutes so far and I was already aroused.

What the fuck is wrong with me. If Danny finds out I am getting horny watching this, it's over. I considered briefly if there was a way to fake having watched it, but I knew I would not be able to fool Danny. I just needed to keep my head on and get through it.

The next 3 minutes were a homage to me -- no other way to describe it. Tyson did not take a lot of time unwrapping his present, but Danny captured every nuance of it in those 3 minutes, focusing on both my body in the most complimentary angles imaginable, and my nervousness as I was exposed, piece by piece. It was electric. Danny had made me look like a goddess. But it was also sad, because what is so obvious is that the more clothes came off, the less this encounter was about Danny and me.

The contrast becomes devastating in the next five minutes, which is essentially a long black cock worship segment. The meaningful looks are no longer for Danny. They are all for Tyson. The whole scene unfolds without me looking over at my husband once... not even a glance.

The next 6 minutes were even more difficult to watch, showing that long penetration moment. The scene focuses on my facial and vocal expressions as I'm stretched open by Tyson's huge cock. Almost no time is wasted on the penetration itself, just very brief shots showing the increasing progress into me.

The focus is on the increasing connection between Tyson and me. How my eyes became fixated on him. How my face shows increasing, unrestrained ecstasy. How my moans and groans and whimpers get louder, all framed with increasingly tighter shots, as if to show the shrinking of my world into just this small universe of Tyson and I, merged in unrestrained pleasure.

I had to hit pause and close my eyes. I was sweating all over. My skin was flushed, my breathing shallow. I squeezed my thighs to try to stay the wetness now seeping out of my pussy. It throbbed with need.

I knew it only got worse from here. Still 9 minutes left. I could not pause for long. I knew Danny was timing this. He was an accountant for God's sake. Of course he was timing it.

Luckily for me, the next 7 minutes would have been erotic if it had been anyone else. But for me, it was a horror show. It was 7 minutes of hard sex, but most of all, it was 7 minutes of abject humiliation for Danny. It captured every scream, every over the top groan, every shaking orgasm.

But above all, it fully documented all the words I had said during this time. No point in repeating it all. The nadir was the long exchange in the middle of the segment.

"What do you want Carrie. Tell me!"

"Oh baby, oh baby you know what I want, keep fucking me hard with that big black dick! I'm gonna come again baby. OH GOD BABY!"

"That's right Carrie. You like that big black dick don't you. What will you do for me if I keep fucking you like this. Tell me bitch!"

"I'm gonna be your bitch Tyson. Please make me your bitch! Oh God, this is so good!"

"That's what you want, you want to be a black cock bitch? Tell me how much you love it!"

And like a dumb mindless animal I screamed "I WANT YOUR BIG BLACK COCK! FUCK ME HARDER. OH, YES! THIS PUSSY LOVES YOUR BLACK COCK!"

"You never had it so good have you bitch -- you ever have dick as good as this?"

"Oh God baby. You know I haven't! You know this is the best dick I've had in my whole life! Don't stop baby, FUCK ME HARDER WITH YOUR BLACK COCK!!"

I paused then. I had tears running down my face. I did not remember half of those things, but I knew they were true. I wiped my face with my arms and pressed play again.

The shot slowly approached me. You can hear Danny's voice, as the bed shakes and I screamed in what really does look like agony.

"Carrie, are you OK? Is everything still alright?'

The lens captures my surprise, my confusion on hearing his voice, my realization that yes, that is my husband speaking, and yes, he's still in the room. You hear him repeat the question and then you can hear me giggling and Tyson chuckling, and my response, my eyes fixed on Tyson:

"Oh Danny. I'm way more than ok, I'm loving this! I've never been so good."

The shot retreats then into blurriness and emerges a beat later, but somehow as if from much further away.

The bed covers are gone. The light has changed a bit, giving you the impression that time has passed. From what is now clearly an outsider's lens, Danny spends the last two minutes of the video focusing on me and Tyson tightly coupled on the stripped bed.

It's not wild sex anymore. Its intimate. He is on top of me, covering me almost completely from view. All you can see are my long legs wrapped around his back, and my arms holding on lovingly to his neck and torso. We are kissing at times, and you can see our mouths sucking and moaning into each other. You can hear my soft, desperate groans and cries. You can hear light whispers, and the lens zooms in on Tyson whispering in my ear as I moan and cry out into his neck. The scene does not stop. As the 28 minutes run out, the camera just fades away into blurriness and then blackness.

For the first time, I sat there, openly weeping for Danny. Not for myself. Not for my fear, not even for my guilt. For his pain. No human being should have had to endure that. He did not want this. It was not hot to him. It was not a game. It was real. And it was hell on earth.

TRUTHS.

I closed the laptop slowly.

My hand trembled as I slid it off my thighs. The final frames of the video still lingered in my mind--my naked body wrapped around Tyson's, my face pressed into his neck, my mouth moving with whispers I could barely remember.

But Danny had seen it. All of it.

The bedroom was bright with afternoon sunlight, but I felt like I was emerging from a cave. My legs were cold. My mouth dry. I padded quietly out of the room, down the hall, and toward the den.

Danny was there. Sitting in the recliner, motionless. Facing the window. He didn't look up as I entered.

"Danny?"

He didn't respond. Not for several seconds.

"Did you watch it?"

I nodded, even though he hadn't turned. "Yes."

Still, he didn't move. I stood awkwardly by the door.

"I understand now," I said softly. "What it must have been like for you."

He blinked.

"It was cruel. Heartless. Not just the act... but how unprepared you were. How little time I gave us. I should've never gone through with it. Not that way, not any way, of course--but definitely not the way it went down. It was so wrong."

He didn't answer.

"I thought I had control of it," I went on, "but I see now... I was just following momentum. I pretended that it would be no different than a porn video. I acted like it was a fucking porn video."

I needed to keep it together. I had promised I would talk like an adult.

"And you--God, Danny, I threw you into that night with nothing. I thought love would be enough to keep us safe. But I was wrong. I endangered you. And us. And I am so, so sorry."

I looked at him hopefully.

He shifted in the chair, finally turning to face me with eyes that looked like someone else's.

"You're sorry for the logistics," he said.

I hesitated. "I'm sorry for all of it. All of it was bad. But the video showed me that not only was I wrong to be there, I was wrong while I was there, and then I had no plan for how to get out of there. I was a total idiot. It was all wrong."

"Carrie, I'm not going to debate you on that. Yes, it was all wrong. We could definitely talk--someday, I guess, maybe--about how it was done. About how it was all too fast. About how there was no plan. About how cruel it was. Yes, it was a clusterfuck."

"That's not fair--I'm also acknowledging that the whole thing was wrong. That I should have never moved forward with that fantasy at all. That I was wrong to even ask you."

"Were you?"

"Danny, of course I was. It was a betrayal. It was wrong. Me sitting here and begging you, please, to let us do that. I will never finish being ashamed for it."

"Why were you wrong to beg? You do that a lot, you know? You like getting your way. You like being on your knees, if we're honest. It's thrilling to you at some level. You don't mind begging. You like it. And when you do get your way, you're delighted. You know we've done it that way a thousand times in our relationship."

I nodded. I knew it was true.

"It was different," I said, "because what I was asking for was wrong. You were right to want to say no, and I was wrong to push for it. This was not me begging for ice cream or for us to go to Disney. This was me begging for something fundamentally harmful and evil."

"Did you know it was wrong when you begged me for it?"

"I should have known."

"So, you didn't know it was wrong. You figured it out after the deed was done--because of my reaction. But leading up to it, I think you didn't know. I actually think what you're beating yourself up about is that you didn't read my signals well enough. That you didn't sense that this was all wrong for me. That you thought I would be OK and I was not--even though I was screaming it at you in every way I could. You're ashamed your desire for that fantasy was so strong, you just ran over me. You essentially manufactured my consent."

I nodded again. That was exactly right.

"That's what I did and I'm so sorry, Danny. I think at some level I knew it was wrong and ignored it. But either way--whether sincere or not--it still should not have happened. I'm ashamed for both things. If I truly missed it, I'm sorry. And if I ignored it, that's even worse. I think it was a little of both."

"But you're not sorry you did it," he said quietly. "You're sorry it hurt me. That's not the same thing. Yes, you should not have manufactured my consent. That is flat out wrong. And a wife shouldn't be blind to her husband's feelings. That's definitely something to be ashamed of. Both are bad."

He looked right at me.

"But those two things are different from the act itself being wrong. The act itself--let's face it--you were right about it. It was me who was wrong."

I stepped forward. "Danny--"

"No, Carrie. Let me explain. Because it's clear you do get some of it. I do appreciate that. I appreciate you watched it, like you promised, and I appreciate you coming out here ready to talk about it."

"I'm trying, but I have to be honest, I'm holding back tears right now."

"You are doing good. We need to get through this."

I nodded vigorously. This felt like progress. Oh what a fool I was.

"But you're still not admitting to the worst thing the video showed," he said. "the truly insurmountable problem."

I did not like that word. I started trembling.

"What I learned, the real problem that may destroy us, Carrie, is that when it comes to the night itself, you were right to want it--and I was wrong to try to deny it from you. The night itself worked perfectly. Beyond your wildest expectations."

He paused.

"The only thing that went wrong that night... was me. Maybe I should not have been there. Maybe I was unprepared. Maybe it was cruel to show me. All that can be true. But you needed that night. You needed to know. And at some level I needed to know too."

After he said that, his voice was more calm. Flat. Unshakable.

"That night showed me who you are. Who you really are when there's no script. No guilt. No vows. Just instincts. Just you."

My throat tightened. "That's not true."

"What was not true?"

"That's not who I really am. I am your wife. The mother of your children. Your best friend. Your true love. That's who I am!"

He walked up to me. Hands extended towards my face like I was a little child. The tenderness and the hurt in his face--it was too much.

I stepped toward him, desperate for what I thought was closeness. Was he going to forgive me? Did I finally reach him?

But he stopped just short. He held my tear-streaked face in his hands and looked into my eyes. His own face was scrunched in pain, his body trembling with sobs he wouldn't allow himself to fully release.

He could barely say it. But he pushed the words out.

"Carrie... my love. My sweetheart. My soul..."

He inhaled sharply, trembling.

"That's who you want to be. That's who you want to be, and I would give away half of the years of my life if I could still believe that it really is who you are. If we could just go back to that fantasy."

His voice dropped, ragged and reverent.

"My fantasy. The fantasy I've been blessed to live for thirty years. You and I, together, always and forever."

We collapsed together, softly, on our knees, facing each other, sobbing. But he didn't let me go. He held my face in his hands. Desperate. His voice, through sobs, came out rough but deliberate. He needed me to hear every word.

"But it's more than any man can ask for. I never had the right to be so lucky... to have you the way you gave yourself to me. To be your man. Your love."

He drew in a shuddering breath.

"And so last night-- It all came due.

The debt on all my blessings came due.

And we both found out the truth, my love.

My true love. My only love."

He pressed his forehead to mine.

"We found out that no matter how desperately we cling to what we want to be...

That's not who we are.

No matter how much it hurts, we must live by the truth.

And the truth is that it's not who you are, Carrie.

My sweet Carrie."

He kissed my forehead.

"I can't keep you caged. I can't condemn you to a life of frustration.

I can't. I love you too much."

His voice dissolved into quiet sobs.

"I'm sorry I wasn't enough.

I'm sorry I never saw you for who you really are.

I'm sorry I gorged myself on your love like a pig at the trough.

... and gave you nothing in return."

He slumped forward, choking on the weight of it.

"It's over, my love.

It's over."

And then he collapsed--fully, completely--into sobs so deep I thought he might never get up again.