Many married men have the problem of how to hide from their wives that they have a mistress. My problem is the exact opposite.
Some time ago, in a conversation with my wife on the subject of “Women's Intuition”, she had said that a wife always senses it if her husband is cheating on her.
I had asked her, jokingly:
“So, in your opinion, am I cheating on you?” “No. Absurd!” she had answered instantly.
In this case her women's intuition was right. But what was so absurd about me having a mistress? I admit that her answer, and the categorical tone of it, put a lump in my throat. I went to bed in the other room. There followed an inner dialogue with my Ego.
“She considers you a second-class man and thinks she practically did you a favour by marrying you. Otherwise, as she sees it, to this day you'd still be snivelling inconsolably after skirts!”
“You're being very extreme!”
My Ego really did have a big mouth.
And it carried on in its typical style, saying that in my place it would let rip with a perfectly clear conscience. I should take my revenge! Cheat to the hilt! That'd show her!
I put forward considerations of the very highest order – that I love her and, on principle, do not approve of revenge, especially in love.
The Ego softened its tone and began to express itself more moderately. I hadn't been right. Until now I'd actually been keeping my wife at a disadvantage. Her married friends were surely fretting over their husbands' escapades, and I had been depriving her of this age-old right of hers. Other women were fighting for their husbands, and hers alone was as safe as houses. Her friends were experiencing these strong emotions, but she wasn't – was that normal? “No!!!!”
Somewhere in the early morning our heated arguments arrived at a compromise and we shook hands on it:
- I would do everything possible to make her doubt my faithfulness.
- No actual infidelity – on this I was adamant.
- When she “caught me”, I would cheerfully confess to my experiment.
She ought to learn the lesson that even women's intuition can make a mistake. Especially when it comes up against brilliant male logic.
As a side effect, I expected my rating in her eyes to go up.
The next day I came home early and cleaned everywhere in the house, and even put a pretty little bouquet in a vase.
In my view, a guilty husband ought to clean more.
According to my plan, I took one of her lipsticks, put it on, kissed a slip of paper and printed the kiss onto my left cheek. Then I scrubbed my mouth with anything and everything.
When my wife came home, she went into raptures over how clean it was. She photographed everything, especially the little bouquet, and sent messages to her friends saying:
“Look how my hubby-wubby welcomed me today – even with a little bouquet!”
That “hubby-wubby” discouraged me a little.
Finally she sat down. I had my left cheek turned towards her, but return calls from her friends came pouring in, and in the middle of one of them she simply reached over, licked her finger and wiped my cheek.
My mistakes were obvious: the lipstick was hers and sat somehow platonically on my cheek, and with my housekeeping I had only needlessly distracted her.
The next day, before leaving the office, I asked the boss's secretary to kiss me on the neck without asking why. She thought I was “cuckoo” anyway, and did it. Her lipstick was a scandalous dark blue. My wife wouldn't wear one like that even posthumously. I could already taste success.
This time I didn't clean at home. But I made a guilty salad and poured myself a glass or two. When my wife came home, I poured one for her too and we clinked glasses. With a quick glance she scanned the kitchen, which was in the same state it had been that morning. Still, she appreciated my wish to spend some time together. Even though the salad had no salt and too little onion and oil, and the parsley was in big chunks.
After that she switched on the television, where a Turkish soap was on. She had missed two episodes and wanted to catch up. Her gaze was fixed only there, and I had to divert it somehow towards my neck, which was starting to cramp in the awkward pose of a pork neck chop. My tried-and-tested method of getting her attention was to get her explaining something to me. When she does that, she always looks me in the eye. I “took an interest” in the relationship between Cemile and Orhan. She explained it to me in excruciating detail and stared back at the television. I poured myself another glass, which did not escape her peripheral vision, however delicately I did it.
When the adverts came on, she looked at me exactly where I wanted. I had prepared a naive answer to her question about what this strange lipstick on my neck was. A question did indeed follow, but it was a completely different one:
“May I know which glass this is for you?”
“The second.”
“Hardly! It's not just since yesterday that I've seen your nose has those blue-and-red veins typical of alcoholics!” And she added:
“And just look at your neck – the blue veins have spread down it too! From tomorrow I forbid you any alcohol whatsoever!”
Clearly, so far I wasn't doing well. For the next day I had planned the bright orange lipstick of the colleague from “Human Resources”. But then who knew what symptom would rush into my wife's head – that I had a vitamin deficiency, or carotene hypervitaminosis, or God knows what. Maybe she'd ban me from carrots and beetroot. Not that I'd miss them. I gave up on the lipstick offensive. I decided it would be a good idea, like every cheating husband, to start paying exceptional attention to my appearance and to show it off. Brazenly.
The next day I bought a brand-new suit, tie, shoes and underwear. I even cut my nails. For most people this may be an elementary exercise, but not for me. For three days after cutting my nails I felt uncomfortable, like a man on the beach whose swimming trunks are full of sand, or who's wearing socks full of sand. Instead of suspecting the hidden purpose of my purchases, my wife praised me. With the proviso that next time she'd come with me, to make the right choice.
After dinner she asked me what my female colleagues had said about my new look. I had anticipated this question. I told her that they had undressed me with their eyes. I had felt it with the back of my neck – just as every woman feels a man's gaze. At last I'd managed to slip in a well-placed little dig of my own.
It had no effect either that I got a more fashionable haircut. It made me somehow more modern, but also highlighted my flaws. Then again, apparently I was “becoming human” – something she had long been expecting of me. So far my progress was zero.
Soon, as soon as my wife came home, I added changing into sportswear and pumping my muscles with dumbbells, sit-ups and even barbells. At the end I'd go in to her out of breath, in the hope of looking more and more like a cheating man.
She began eyeing my swelling old bones, and as a result our sex life was reborn. As the saying went: “You aim at one thing and hit another!” Still, I comforted myself that “The end justifies the means”.
Our reborn sex life was very welcome, but it contradicted my strategy of getting her to suspect me of infidelity. It was logical for her to think that my manly vigour wasn't being squandered “somewhere out there”. My behaviour lately had been that of a faithful husband who had taken his appearance and his body in hand, cleaned more and had even fallen in love with his wife again. From zero, my progress was now tending towards negative.
I started coming home late on purpose. As a rule my wife got home after me. It was a rainy spell, and every evening I was forced to wait stoically in one of the entrances of the block opposite ours for the light in our flat to finally come on, so that I could come home like a proper gentleman.
No effect whatsoever, apart from the residents of that entrance starting to give me funny looks.
My new idea was to come home late, smelling of the most tarty perfume possible and of beer. The two things went together perfectly. At the end of the working day I asked a suitable female colleague to spray me generously with her perfume. This time I waited for our light upstairs to come on in the bistro near our home. I drank beer and rehearsed guilty answers out loud. Some people around started looking at me in surprise, seeing no “hands-free” on me.
When I got home, my wife was right behind the door; she sniffed me and laid into me:
“Let me guess! You came up in the lift with Petrova from the sixth floor, didn't you? I can't stand breathing that bitch's perfume! Go and hang your clothes out on the balcony to air right now!”
I went to bed in despair. But, as if on order, there was a film on TV in which a wife catches her husband cheating because there's a pair of another woman's knickers in his jacket pocket.
Now this was a mega-cool idea! Just the thing for me! There was no way it wouldn't work!
In the morning I went impatiently to a posh lingerie shop.
I took a pair of knickers from the counter and stood in front of the mirror to judge whether they would fit me – and therefore my wife, since she and I had the same hips. I was convinced the knickers had to be exactly her size. Otherwise she might suspect I was cheating on her with some “porker” or some “old bag” and not pay them proper attention. I was about to “try” others, but the shop assistants were already bringing me more with a smile, each sexier than the last. I swanned about in front of the mirror and in the end bought one pair. I dare say they took quite a shine to me. We parted with smiles. I walked out of there like a film star.
That evening I came home suitably late and hung my jacket in a prominent place. I left a corner of the knickers sticking out of its right pocket. I called out in the voice of a guilty American husband:
“Are you home, honey?”
My wife popped her head out of her room and said she still had things to do in there, she was sorting out her underwear. I should have whatever I liked for dinner. When she finally came into the kitchen with the knickers in her hands, she didn't look angry but rather very worried, and she asked me:
“Do you know where I found these knickers of mine? In your jacket pocket, if you please! God only knows why I stuffed them in there. Idiot!”
“Look” – she sniffed the knickers – “they still smell of the shop! So I must have bought them recently, and I don't even remember it! Obviously something's going on with my head! It must be that – German – who's got me! What was his name – come on, say it, say it quickly!”
“M-mmm – Beethoven?”
“Nonsense! The one with the diseases of the head!”
“Ahhhh, Schumacher?”
“Alzheimer, you silly! He's probably got you too!”
I realised that I really was a silly. How had I not thought that the knickers shouldn't smell of the shop? Idiot!
I could have asked one of the kind assistants in the lingerie shop to wear them for 20-odd minutes! What's the big deal? They wouldn't have refused me! I had missed a golden opportunity! One like that was hardly going to come my way again.
Before falling asleep I took bitter stock of what I had achieved over the last month:
After the strange lipstick I had been banned from alcohol.
I never get into the lift any more if I'd be riding with Petrova from the sixth floor.
The people from the block opposite avoid me.
Regular nail-cutting had got on my nerves a bit.
I had spent unnecessary money on a suit, a tie, underwear and an expensive pair of knickers. None of them were approved by my wife. Never mind my suit, but my heart ached for the knickers. In her opinion, they were for an ageing woman. That was probably yet another blunder of mine.
I had needlessly worried my wife about her mental health.
I was getting fed up with the dumbbells and barbells. The positive thing was that we had revived our sex life. But that wasn't according to my plan, i.e., as always, the good things in my life happened by someone else's will, and the bad ones by mine.
Still, ever since I'd put the emphasis on my appearance, my female colleagues at work had started eyeing me up. As an old song used to go: “From a modest, plain and humble man, I suddenly became much in demand.” Before, they'd thought I was “cuckoo” there, and now – “a stud”. But like every good thing, this had its downsides. There was a danger I might slide down the slippery slope and fail to resist some temptation. And at our wedding I had “sworn” faithfulness to my wife “till death do us part”, and I stand by my word. She can do as she pleases.
I had “raised the bar” for my wife. It was looking inevitable that I'd have to go on cleaning, keeping up my appearance, dressing up, looking at myself in the mirror, cutting my nails, pumping my muscles and getting my hair cut regularly. Things I didn't fancy. The only good result of my experiment was our reborn sex life. From which it followed that from now on, even if I produced a notarised certificate of infidelity, she still wouldn't believe me.
By bravely taking on women's intuition, I had overestimated myself.
In the invisible match between male logic and women's intuition, the score was 1:5. For now.
I decided to give up the experiment while there was still time. I'd only have waded in deeper. Maybe women's intuition rests on male stupidity, eh?
