‘I’m about to come out to my wife’
Two nights ago she said she didn’t know what I’d been doing, or what I was up to, and she had lost all confidence in me. I took out my phone to show her that for each hour of the day she could track my location from the pictures I’d taken, but she didn’t buy it.
I got angry, bristled at the thought that she didn’t trust me, the thought that she thinks she’s smarter than me, smart enough to figure out what I’ve so methodically been trying to hide.
“I don’t even know you anymore,” she said.
I’m still shuddering, because she knows.
Was it the quick showers as soon as I got home? Me doing my laundry myself? The chasm between us in bed? My inability to touch her?
She knows. And now I’m about to come out to my wife.
The fact is, I don’t even know myself what’s going on. There’s an awakening in me, something I haven’t felt in years. It’s exciting – the nights after work, the meetings at the bar where we drink shots upon shots, and afterwards I’ll drive home, Tracy Chapman blasting, the cool air hitting me in the face, sobering me up.
Meanwhile, I’ve tried to explain away the frequent calls. They’re new clients, I tell her. They like my ambition, my drive. They share business ideas with me. I’ll soon be a very successful man. But she looks in my face and I know that she knows that it’s odd behaviour, and I’m waiting for her to ask.
How does one reconcile the life he knows – the perfect family, perfect children, perfect wife, perfect home – with this desire for more, for something else, something exciting? When I’m driving home, blasting music, yearning for love, in those times it’s me, just me, wanting to yield to my desires… wanting desperately to yield.
Pretty soon I imagine that she will ask and I will have to tell her yes. But for now, yes is such a complex word, a complex confession that I’m not yet prepared to make.
