The Botched Marriage Ch. 10

CHAPTER 10. THE SEVENTH DAY.

I was taught in catechism that God created the world in six days, and he rested on the seventh. I was also told God is good. Well, I was also always told I am bad. Right now, I tend to believe them. They were right about me all along. I'm bad, I'm trouble. I'm too much. I wish they had also warned me I would grow up to be a wretched fucking whore. A heads up would have been helpful.

So naturally, I did the opposite of what God did. In six days, I destroyed my whole world. And on the seventh day, on the one-week anniversary of the biggest mistake of my life, I couldn't just rest, hell, I couldn't even sleep. So, I tried to destroy everyone else's world.

But really, I just wanted to talk to Danny. That's how it all started. I know he came back into town around 4 pm, because he picked up the kids at my mom's place. It was not a secret or anything. He didn't bring them by the house, instead driving straight to his parents' home and planned to have them there for the weekend, take them to church on Sunday, and then head out of town again for another 80-hour workweek. Saint Daniel of the Old Neighborhood.

Evidently, he was planning to avoid going by our home like the plague, of course, since I was probably hosting a gang bang there.

And I guess I was upset for having been left out of my husband's plans. Yes, even though he had asked me for space. Yes, even though this whole thing was my fault. Yes, even though I'm just a stupid worthless whore.

I still wanted to talk to him. I just wanted to see his face. To hear his voice. Maybe to lick his fucking feet clean if he would bestow that upon me, not that there was any chance of that.

So how did Danny's whore wife repay him for his devotion to his children, his church, and our financial wellbeing? Well, I will tell you. As much as I can remember. Because I was so bitter about not being able to reach out to him, I drank half a bottle of wild turkey by myself, sitting at my kitchen table.

Then, I got in the car and drove it right into the Miller's front lawn. I scraped a couple of things on the way there, too, but thank goodness I didn't hurt anyone.

In short, I well and truly lost it. I did not know such a thing was possible. I have seen such things online of course, in movies. But I always assumed it was performative. Staged in some ways.

Until that seventh day, I had no idea a human being was capable of completely losing their minds. I won't go into every embarrassing detail. I barely remember half of them. Bottom line is he was not home when I got there and smashed Ms. Marie's prized Hummel Virgin Mary, which had been in the family for three generations.

He had taken the kids out to play mini-golf and ice cream and who know what other adventures. I screamed at the house for a bit, and it turns out his parents really were there, but didn't come out soon enough because they were taking the opportunity to take a romantic shower together. They only heard the commotion on their front yard when they ran out of hot water.

While I waited for them, I reminded Danny of how sexy and sweet I can be by projectile vomiting on the stairs leading to his basement apartment. The neighbors called the police when they tired of my wailing in their front yard. By the time Mr. Kyle peeked out his living room window, I was already having a screaming argument with two of their neighbors.

One of them had been a classmate of ours during the Ronnie White incident, because she had a vivid memory of what that had been all about. She had a lot to say about why Danny should have never married me, too. I called her a fat asshole and when she got in my face, I decked her and broke her nose. Then her husband came at me, and I would have decked him too and probably gotten my face rearranged, but Mr. Kyle intervened at that point.

Ms. Marie got a hold of me then and was trying to calm me down, saying, Carrie your children could be here at any minute -- they can't see you like this. But apparently, that didn't reach me and I told her I didn't give a fuck if the children saw me like this because that's who I am and I'm not ashamed.

Yes, I'm a bad mother in addition to a whore and an idiot.

At that point the police arrived. Danny's mom lied to them, told them I was not driving. That I had just been trying to park the car because I was staying with them. Big mistake. Apparently, it's a crime in our state to lie to the police while protecting a criminal. Even if she's your whore daughter in law embarrassing you, yet again, on your own front lawy. It's still illegal.

Then Danny showed up, with the kids. His phone had been blowing up for an hour but he'd figured it was just me, which was a totally reasonable assumption. He came running because his parents are not that old, but still, an ambulance and three squad cars in front of his house is never good news.

I had already blacked out by the time he got there. By this, I mean I have absolutely no memory of what happened. By all accounts, I humiliated myself in a catharsis of shame, desperation and self-hatred. In front of his entire neighborhood, I begged on my knees for forgiveness for being a whore. For being a despicable disgusting selfish dumbass. I begged while screaming and retching. I threatened to kill myself. I cursed at him, his parents, even our children. I insulted myself over and over until I would choke on the words and start retching again. I begged for God to end my life right there. That's all bad enough, but the worst part was what I begged for the most. Because what I asked for, again and again, was for Danny to forgive me for being a black cock whore.

I woke up in the hospital, strapped to the bed, an IV-line dripping fluids back into my system. I'd been charged too, though that didn't matter right then and there. My mom was in the room, her face a mask of sorrow and worry. Katie was there, bristling with fury, pity, and contempt.

Dad, oh God. Dad was there. Outside the room, his hands in his pockets, talking quietly with Danny's dad, both looking like two men addressing an open casket.

My sister's reaction after I stirred and asked for ice water was so honest it was almost comical. She got up, glared at me, and on her way out the door said, "well, she's alive. Now she can go fuck herself. I'm gonna go back to the house and see if I can seduce Danny."

My poor dad followed her briskly while groaning "Katie!!"

At least she was honest.

My mom began crying then and I don't think she stopped for a couple of hours. She adores Danny. He's like her actual son. The son she should have had, instead of the two ungrateful, passive aggressive little bitches she did have.

Danny's dad just looked at me with horror. He wanted to be good, strong, honorable. He wanted to be a man, above the fray, but he couldn't. I could see the hurt in his eyes too, just like in Danny's. The same eyes. The same kind, generous, intelligent eyes. Yet there he was, smiling compassionately at me. Trying to be kind. All I could see was Danny's broken smile, the pain so deep I could almost touch it if he would let me run my fingers over his face.

I took one look at him and started weeping. He turned around and walked away. He knew right then and there we might never be able to look each other in the eye again.

Through my tears I asked, "are the babies, OK? Please God, are they OK, where are they?"

"They are with Danny, baby. They are safe. They spent the night with him. He has them. And Marie, she's with them too. He's not alone."

Marie. Danny's mom. She had lied for me. A lot. She had lied to the police over and over. I remembered that much before it all went blank, right before Danny got there.

'Is Marie OK?"

"She was charged. Obstruction of justice. She will get a court date too, same as you. We will worry about all that later. We will deal with it as a family. Right now, she's with Danny. She didn't have to spend more than a couple of hours in detention. Your dad paid for her bail of course, we wouldn't have it any other way."

I passed back out then. Probably of shame.

I missed Katie's return, essentially dragged back to the room by dad, who didn't want her to go, just in case she was serious about seducing Danny.

Next time I came to, the police were there. Small community. Both my dad and Danny's dad were volunteer fire fighters for decades. They were all friendly, but the undercurrent of shame was palpable.

They released me from the hospital around 3 pm. Apparently, Danny had been on his way, thinking I was going to be there longer, but he just missed me. Instead, I was taken right to the station, booked, and marched over to the court the next morning, where I was able to post bail. Danny paid for it as I wept.

Mom and Dad drove me to their home. Danny and I rode in the back, as we had done so many times during our teen years. It was nostalgic and it was so fucking painful because Danny held my hand the whole way but never looked at me in the eyes. We didn't talk about anything either. My parents sat in silence, and I just wept in the back.

And when we got home to my parents, he left again. The kids needed a parent and Ms. Marie was on the verge of a nervous breakdown herself. They broke the news to me like I was a little child. My mom told me that she and Danny needed to go and relieve Marie. That she was not feeling well, and they were worried about her. That I needed to be strong and let them do what is best for the kids and trust that Danny would be back, that soon, when I was calm and better and this storm has passed, I would have a chance to talk to him.

Then she hugged me and broke down into tears like someone had died. Which felt right. We wept in each other's arms and then they walked out. Danny didn't kiss me goodbye. No hug either. He said that he loved me, that he would be back tomorrow, that it would all be Ok. Then he gave me that fake smile I had come to dread like a mask of death.

Dad went to the kitchen to heat up some soup and bread for us, and it was just me and Katie in the living room.

She had started crying, too, when mom and I did. But she was keeping her distance. I knew she wanted to say her peace, and so I opened myself to it. I knew whatever she had for me, I deserved.

"Go ahead Katie. There is nothing you can say that I have not said to myself already."

"I just wish you hadn't said it to yourself where the whole fucking neighborhood could hear."

"I'm sorry. I know this has been a humiliation for everyone. I know and right now I can't focus on that. I'm sorry and I will get on my knees and apologize to each one of you soon, but right now I have to focus on Danny and the kids."

She looked at me like I had lost my mind. "You think I give a shit about me? About mom and dad? You don't know that Danny is exactly who I'm talking about? Danny and the kids are all I'm talking about right now."

"I know."

"Well, that's not what you just said, you fucking weasel. I don't give a shit that we are the county's laughingstock right now. Don't give a single fuck. But Danny. Everyone knows what you did to him now. Did he say anything at all in the car, anything?"

I felt like an idiot. "I just cried the whole way. We didn't really talk."

The anger in her face was like an explosion. Like Satan himself flashed over her countenance and released into our living room. She jumped to her feet like the couch was on fire.

"You selfish fucking cunt! It was a half fucking hour ride!! You mean to tell me you didn't ask about him at all? You only wept and accepted his reassurance and love while he is fucking dying inside??"

That only made me weep harder.

"STOP FUCKING CRYING YOU SELFISH CUNT!!!"

Dad came out of the kitchen then and wrapped his huge arms around her, dragging her away, whispering something in her ear I couldn't hear.

"LET ME GO, DAD! SHE NEEDS TO UNDERSTAND!"

Somehow, 110-pound Katie wrestled herself away from my 250 pound dad and made it halfway back towards me.

"YOU FUCKING COW YOU NEED TO STOP THINKING ABOUT YOUR OWN WHORE ASS FOR A FUCKING MINUTE AND REALIZE YOU ARE GOING TO BE A WIDOW NEXT!!! YOU HEARING ME YOU WHORE??? NOBODY GIVES A FUCK ABOUT YOUR TEARS, YOU FUCKING CUNT. WAKE UP!!!"

That's the last I heard. Dad dragged the little Tasmanian devil all the way up the stairs and somehow shut her up. I heard a door slam and then his hurried steps as he rushed back to me, like I too was on a suicide watch.

But she did wake me up. Of all the things anyone had said to me that day, Katie's were the most valuable. They were probably the most valuable words spoken to me in my whole life. Because this could have all gone a lot worse, and it didn't in part because in that moment I had finally understood the whole truth:

First, I am a worthless, selfish whore.

Second, Danny is a good, decent, worthwhile human being.

Third, I was blessed with the gift of being Danny's true love and of having his babies.

Fourth, I had destroyed that love, probably destroyed Danny and might be in the process of damaging his babies.

Fifth, my only worth now was in my capacity to help save Danny and our babies.

Sixth, what happens to me beyond that is not important.

And now that I knew the truth, I needed to stop crying and start making things right.

MENTAL HEALTH EMERGENCY.

By the time Dad was standing in front of me, catching his breath, I felt like a different person. I had clarity. It felt like oxygen.

"Dad, there are guns at the house. You know that right?"

"No. Not anymore. We took them, same as a couple of guns in Maria and Kyle's basement. Everything got put away in our gun safes and both are double locked right now."

"Thank you. That's good that you thought to do that."

"I also took a whole bunch of stuff out of your house, just so you know. His welding tanks, some dangerous tools, your kitchen knives. Any plastic bags I could find. All the rope. Everything is locked in my truck right now. It's all safe in there. Unless he is willing to kill himself with a wrench or a butter knife, I think we have made it a lot harder for him."

I was about to say thank you again, but I saw the look in his eyes. A piece of bad news was coming.

"Look I don't know how to say this. Katie and I looked at your computer to see if either of you had suicide stuff on your browser history. What we found was your video. The title was just a date, we had no way of knowing what it was. We saw a few minutes, which is how long it took us to even wrap our minds around what we were looking at. I just wanted to be honest that we did see it."

I just looked at the floor, and tried to breathe, while repeating my mantra to myself. None of it mattered. I had no pride left. Danny is all that matters.

Eventually, I looked up at him, but we both somehow avoided eye contact. "I think I'm calm enough now. Can we get Katie back here? I promise I'm done with self-pity. She is totally right. I need to wake up. I need to act. I will have my whole life to cry."

Turns out Katie was right there. She had been at the top of the stairs, just out of sight. She walked down, looking at me the whole time, wondering probably whether I was sane enough to trust.

"I'm OK dad. Act how, Care. Tell us."

"I need your help. I don't know what the right thing to do is. But I get it. You are right. I've been a selfish bitch, and this has nothing to do with me anymore. We have to save Danny and the babies."

The tears were running down my face again, but I did not collapse into weeping. I just sat there. Katie was surprisingly gentle. She rushed to me and wrapped her arms around me.

"It's ok to cry. You have lost everything too. But you need to be strong now, and Danny is not going to be able to help you be strong. You are going to have to find strength where you never knew there was any. We're all going to help you."

I looked up to see Dad with tears in his eyes. But he did not hug me. He just watched, and I wondered why. My selfish whore mind at it again. I did not deserve a hug, yet my selfish whore mind still dared to wonder why my dad, my honorable dad, my kind, strong, compassionate data, did not rush over to hug and comfort his disgusting whore daughter. Like I had any right.

I shook it off.

Katie did not waste time. "So, Carrie, if you are with me, are you listening carefully? I'm about to tell you a bunch of things you need to know. I've spent all day doing research. But I need you to really listen because this stuff is a bit complicated."

I nodded. I looked up at my little sister. She had always been the smart one. Everyone knew that.

"So, what you are both experiencing right now is a mental health crisis caused by a botched cuckolding, resulting in a relationship collapse. There are whole books written about this that you should have read before you tried this, and I'm betting you didn't read a single one."

I shook my head no, shamefaced.

"I'm guessing what you did do, was watch a bunch of fucking porn videos, which is where you got the crazy idea to try this to begin with."

It was painful to acknowledge how stupid that sounded now.

"I don't have a psych degree, so I will get some terminology wrong, but essentially, cuckolding is like the most dangerous, most advanced, most complex kink in the world. You would have been safer if you had decided to try rope bondage underwater erotic asphyxiation. That is easy compared to cuckolding. You guys went from never having talked about this to meeting a bull at a hotel in what, five days? Do I have that right?"

I nodded. I was trembling.

"So, without knowing a fucking thing about erotic asphyxiation or rope bondage, you guys went and tried to do it underwater. And Danny drowned and died. That's what happened."

"But what do I do now," I cried, shaking like a leaf.

"I'm getting to it. I just need to you to understand the exact problem. Cuckolding is a highly ritualistic kink, and thats for a reason. It is intended to trigger profound emotional responses, and the enormous response IS the kink. Cuckolding is very much like masochism. Except jealousy, insecurity, dread, angst, fear, replace intense physical pain. The cuckold is a masochist who gets off on receiving pain, but not physical pain, rather deep emotional and psychological pain."

"Danny is not any of that. He doesn't even really like rough sex."

"No shit. You took a guy who doesn't like to drive fast, strapped him to a rocket and shot him into outer space. And on the other end you found he had died of a heart attack."

"I didn't know. I didn't know any of this."

"That's bullshit and you know it. He tried to tell you. I don't believe you."

"He didn't tell me in these terms. He just seemed uncomfortable. Like he was scared, which I was too. I thought we would both be scared and we would both have fun. I thought looking uncomfortable was part of the thing? That jealousy would end up being hot for him, somehow."

Dad broke in then. "Katie, this is not about blame right now. This is about solutions. We need solutions. You are doing great. We are all learning here. But please, no more blame. We have a lifetime of that coming up for all of us. This is really helpful and I'm always amazed at how much you can learn in one day. Keep going. But stick to the point."

Katie took a few deep breaths, as if centering herself. "Sorry. Ok. You are right. Ok, so my point was, people who do cuckolding in real life, not in porn movies, follow a very specific ritual. There are steps, with names. Consent, Communication, After Care, Healing, Reclaiming. I don't know all of them. And they are watching for symptoms of a botched cuckolding and if a symptom occurs, particularly in a new couple, everything halts. In the 3 minutes of the video I watched, I saw at least one such moment, when you laughed at Danny when he expressed concern about your safety. You had no plan at all for that. The bull didn't acknowledge him at all. You dismissed him and laughed at his concern. It was all wrong, and it was just in the tiny bit I watched. I bet you he was traumatized 100 times in those 3 hours in that hotel room. Frankly, I suspect it was hell on earth. Literal hell on earth for him."

I was doing my best not to weep. She was right. It was all true.

"So that's the big issue, What you thought was a kinky adventure was three hours of hell on earth for Danny. And as a result, it looks to me like Danny is now on the way to becoming a PTSD patient. We all know what that is. Uncle Keith died from it after Iraq. So, that's one piece."

She looked around to see if we were still with her.

"Second, he has undergone essentially a brainwashing event, like a cult survivor. He KNOWS, with 100% certainty, that what he saw in that hotel room is the whole truth. The only truth. His whole life was emotionally erased. He was disassembled and rebuilt from the ground up in those 3 hours of torture, and only has emotional awareness of what he experienced in that room and can see in that video."

I needed to ask. "Is that why I can't reach him? Why nothing I say seems to land at all? I feel like his certainty on some issues goes beyond my betrayal and his own humiliation. I get what I did was terrible, but it's like he has forgotten about our whole lives before that night."

"That's it exactly. He's not forgotten intellectually. But he has no connection to that identity. In his mind, he is an inadequate cuckold. That is his whole persona now. Again, just like in a cult. And Carrie is a black cock slut. That is all you are. Both of your actual identities have become invisible to him."

"I think I know a bit about this," Dad jumped in. "The cult thing. I had a good friend in high school, very good friend, who joined a cult. We got him back eventually, but yeah, I do remember the psych issues. And the two words that resonate right now with me are disassociation and identity confusion. Essentially, the cult traumatized him to the point where he disassociated from his real personality, and they handed him an identity to fill in the gap. That's how I understood it. It sounds to me like what Danny went through in those 3 hours of hell was that he disassociated from himself and Carrie, and instead adopted for himself the personality of inadequacy and for her the personality of the... um, well of the..."

"The black cock whore," I said, as I watched my father cringe.

"So, we have a diagnosis," said Katie, her face all business. "PTSD, disassociation, identity confusion. And we know from our family experience that this stuff is deadly. The fourth horseman here is shame. That's not psychological, it's more sociological. But it can be just as traumatic. He's ashamed. He was ashamed at the start with the bull and then of course with Carrie. But now he knows for certain that we all know. Not just his family, but the whole town knows. His high school friends, the other parents at school, the cute barista he maybe has a secret fantasy about. They all know he is less of a man."

The silence lingered for a while as I wept, and then Katie spoke again.

"Dad, what happened to your high school friend."

"He killed himself," dad said, glancing at me but avoiding my eyes. "But we've taken all the tools away. Right now he is with your mom, who is watching him like a hawk. You know she adores that boy like he's her own."

"Better than her own," added Katie, tears welling up in her eyes.

There was a long silence then, as we all considered all that I had destroyed, their eyes fixed on the floor, avoiding mine.

"So, what now," I broke in slowly. "We find a psychologist, right? Is that the answer?"

"Not on a Saturday night, Carrie. Probably not on a weekend at all."

"And we need to find a good one, one who can manage tricky sexual issues. That's going to be a task in itself. We will start that process tomorrow. But in the meantime, I'm gonna read the trauma informed crisis response guidelines tonight. I just downloaded the training app. I hope to be an expert by tomorrow and start teaching you guys a bit. There's stuff in there we can all learn to help Danny along. "

"Terrific, and while you do all that, we do know someone who we can talk to tomorrow," said Dad. "Father Anthony. He's a certified therapist of some sort, and he is the one who taught your marriage class, right Carrie?"

I nodded. My humiliation was absolute, but that was not important anymore.

"I will take him to church tomorrow then. Carrie, you can stay back and watch the kids. I doubt Danny is ready for a family mass right now, but maybe we can start doing some good."

"I will tell him," said Katie. "I'm going to head over, check on mom, check on Marie, and hopefully I can sit down with Danny and coax him into crying on my shoulder a bit."

Dad looked cautiously between Katie and I as he said, slowly, "that sounds like a good plan."

She kissed his cheek, grabbed her keys from the entry table, and reached for the front door. At the last second, I stopped her. I didn't move from the couch, I just called out to her from where I was sitting.

"Katie?"

She stopped at the door, her keys in her hands, but didn't turn around. "Yes, Carrie?"

"I..... I beg you. Please don't flirt with him. You've toed right at the line your whole life. Please be careful. This is not the time to be the dangerous little sister. OK?"

Katie turned to me very slowly. Fury once again covered her face. Anger so deep it made my blood run cold.

"You have some fucking nerve. Some fucking nerve."

She turned and left. I didn't know what I was supposed to say.

Dad was still there, looking at me like I was an alien. Like he didn't know me at all.