Life, at times, can be a real pain in the ass. Sometimes it throws you fast balls, sometimes curves and occasionally a boomerang. A wise woman once told me that whatever life throws at you it's never more than you can handle.
I've been challenging that assertion for several years now. Let me explain.
My name is Adam and I'm self employed. That's what I usually tell people but actually, I don't work at all. I don't have to. When I was in college, my roommate, Clark, and I developed an application that analyzed text and reworded it so that the meaning was intact but the text wasn't traceable back to the original. In other words, plagiarism was undetectable. We never gave away the app but we used it to give university students an undetectable way to write and submit papers to the professors, for a small fee.
Word about the app spread rapidly. The university tried to suppress it but failed without the code or knowing who we were and a proposal to reject all papers and theses submitted by the students didn't fly with the professors. No student would admit to using the app service for self serving reasons and no one identified us for the same reasons.
In our senior year, we connected with an artificial intelligence company and showed them our app. They weren't impressed by the simple textual transformation we provided but, after reviewing the source code, they were impressed by the algorithm we had developed. So impressed, they began to negotiate to purchase it from us.
They couldn't hide their enthusiasm which strengthened our bargaining position. In the end, we settled for a huge cash amount up front and a very long-term annual royalty payment. The result is that neither of us has to work again. We live nicely on the investment incomes and royalty payments.
I was approaching thirty-three years of age without a care in the world. Everything I wanted or hoped for was within my grasp, except the perfect woman to share it with. I was at a loss to explain it. Clark was married, with three kids, an oversized house on an oversized piece of land and a passport that needed extra pages.
It could have been my quirky nature or my high standards. Women were plentiful. Most were flighty or gold diggers. The sex was easy, quick and devoid of emotional connections.
Then, at a breakfast event supporting a foundation with a cause that garnered my respect, I met Samantha. I was seated next to her at a table in the rear of the room. She was bright and witty with a body that defied description and intelligent beyond her years. I spent two hours talking to her and realized that I could spend my life talking to her.
My inner psyche told me she felt the same way about me. We talked that morning until they turned out the lights and asked us to leave. We spent the day walking together through the city and several of its parks. We had lunch together and then dinner. Reluctantly, I sent her home in a cab and regretted it immediately. I wanted her home with me. Fortunately, we had exchanged personal information including addresses and phone numbers.
I called her that night when I got home. Her laughter when she answered the phone finalized my thinking. I was going to marry this woman.
Sam and I were married within six months. Clark was my best man and Chloe, Sam's best friend and confident, was her maid of honor. We had it all. We loved every minute together and our passports' extra pages were filling up fast. We celebrated our first anniversary at a resort in Tuscany and began to talk about kids, dogs and picket fences.
Everything crashed three months later.
Sam wasn't feeling well and we went to the doctor. After examining her, he wasn't very forthcoming. He wanted to do more tests. Three weeks later, we had the results. Sam had stage 4 pancreatic cancer. Five weeks later, she was gone.
Chloe and I held her hands in the hospice when she died. Her last words to me were, "Don't mourn me. You'll always have me with you but you have a life to live. Live it. Find someone and share your life with her."
For almost the next two years, I lived like a hermit in my small, but well-appointed apartment. Memories of Sam were everywhere and it was impossible for me to leave them. I had everything I needed delivered. My only human contact was Chloe.
Chloe mourned with me but she constantly reminded me about Sam's final instruction to me. "Live your life," she told me every time we were together. After about six months, Chloe tired of just telling me to live my life and decided to push me out the door.
It took her almost another year to get me out the door. By then, I had grown a beard.
One day, she cornered me and asked for my credit card. I knew her to be a frugal person so I gave her my Centurion American Express Card. Three days later she showed up with a barber and an electric trimmer with combs. Together, they gave me a haircut and a beard trim. I really didn't care too much about my hair style but I had grown accustomed to my beard. The result was hair I could part and a beard about three quarters of an inch long with shaved cheeks and neck. I approved of the makeover and the barber left.
Chloe presented me with a first-class plane ticket and a weeklong reservation at a resort in Arizona. I resisted but Chloe was determined. She reminded me of Sam's last words to her: "Promise me you'll take care of Adam and make sure he falls in love again."
I tried to get Chloe to come with me but she was adamant that I go alone, mix with the other guests and get laid. The next day, I was driven to the airport and seven hours later I was in Tucson. The resort was incredible, the golf challenging and the food plentiful and gourmet. However, most of the guests were couples or groups and there was little opportunity for me to socialize let alone encourage something intimate.
Eight days later, I was back home.
Chloe felt bad about her choice of location for my return to civilization. Her second attempt was an improvement. About three weeks later, I was booked on an eight-day, seven-night cruise of the Caribbean with daily stops at different islands. After another hair and beard trim, I was on my way to Fort Lauderdale and a medium sized cruise ship.
I had priority boarding and first-class service. I had a large suite, for a cruise ship, with separate living and bedroom areas in the bow of the ship with a balcony. I boarded early and my stateroom wasn't ready so I wandered the ship, familiarizing myself with the various areas of the ship including the retail section, the theater, casino, walking track and two pools, one of them adults only at the stern of the ship.
When my room was ready, I took a short nap and a shower. In the larger than normal stateroom, the shower was large enough for one and tight for two. It was over a triangular tub that would easily soak two if they kept their knees bent.
I dressed in jeans, a long sleeved, crew neck shirt and moccasins and headed for my six pm dinner reservation in the main dining room. I was shown to my table for four along the starboard side of the ship with large windows to watch the ocean as we cruised. My name was on a place card at the table along with three other place cards with female names. I wondered if Chloe had made the arrangements. I ordered a drink and studied the menu. Several minutes after my drink arrived, I was joined by three women for dinner.
They were traveling together and sharing a stateroom. I stood and introduced myself. I learned that they were Marge, Steph and Eve. Marge was seated next to me with Steph and Eve across the table. I offered Marge the seat by the window but she declined and sat next to the aisle. Conversation over dinner with the ladies was surprisingly candid and informative. They were all approximately my age and had similar stories about why they were cruising together. Individually and by separate methods, each had discovered their husbands of between ten and fifteen years were all having sex with younger women.
Marge had discovered texts, with genital photos, between her husband and two other women; Steph had suspicions about her husband's extracurricular activities and had paid a private detective for hard evidence and Eve had been taken by surprise when she answered her husband's phone and was blindsided by an angry female accusing her of "fucking her boyfriend."
They had found each other through a social media site that offered advice to individuals who had been betrayed by philandering spouses. Their proximity to each other resulted in meeting and working together to deal with their situations. The consequential question for each of them was what to do about their husbands fucking other women. They discussed a number of options that ranged from divorce to murder and settled on "leveling the playing field."
That seemed an unusual solution to me. Were they suggesting that they overlook their husband's indiscretions and resort to equally unacceptable affairs of their own or were they seeking vengeance with actions they could throw in their husband's faces as a sort of punishment? I asked the question.
They couldn't answer the question directly. Their consensus response was that they all had children that relied on the family structure, their husbands all provided substantially comfortable lifestyles and they all feared of the unknown future that divorces produced. They wanted to "confront" their husbands without "punishing" them and, hopefully, arrive at "open" marriages.
They were aligned in their determination that this cruise was the first step in "leveling the playing field" and they were traveling together to support each other in taking that step. They were determined to "get laid."
I considered what they were telling me and wondering if I was on the playing field and under consideration. It seemed a reasonable conclusion and fit with Chloe's instructions to me. While I was pondering, the three of them excused themselves to go to the lady's room.
They returned all smiles and determination. I knew from their attitude that they had reached a joint conclusion and I was part of their plan. I smiled back and decided to go with the flow.
Marge sat next to me again. Steph and Eve collected their things and excused themselves suggesting that we meet them again for breakfast the next morning. The way they used the plural "we" suggested to me that Marge and I would be a couple for at least the next few hours or the rest of the night.
Marge was sitting next to me, still smiling but in an uncomfortable way. My best amateur analyst concluded that she was determined to follow through but was uneasy, possibly scared, about "getting laid" for the first time outside of her marriage. I wasn't a stranger to that feeling. The memories of Samantha were heavy on my mind. Sex with another woman was a big step, strengthened by Chloe's admonition and Marge's presence.
