PART 1
I'm an engineer. I design and build oil rigs, wind farms and bridges. I'm good at bridges -- I have a doctorate and a very nicely paid job to prove it. I'm trained to evaluate stress points, breaking strains and assess hidden tension. I do that properly and the bridge stays up and nobody falls to their death.
And in my considered, professional opinion, my marriage was a bridge that was just about to dump people, cars and trains into the river at any moment. It was right at the tipping point.
I had instantly calculated all that from just eight words. I told you I was good.
"They've asked me to be in The Dance."
The Dance. Every country has one -- that television show where B-list celebrities are invited into a dance competition over a number of weeks. The winner gets a trophy and a chance at moving up in the celebrity pecking order. The losers just go away to try and tour their dancing. It's very popular.
My wife looked at me, her eyes shining with excitement and a huge smile on her beautiful face, waiting for my response. I knew she didn't understand all the ramifications of what she had just announced, I think women rarely consciously put their men in a no-win situation. Subconsciously -- oh yes! They delight in it; a chance to revel in that rare chance to hold all the power.
It was a Heads I Win -- Tails I Win situation. No matter how you tossed the coin, rolled the dice, flipped the card; she won and I lost everything.
I know some of you are sensing what the problem is, so I'll get straight to the heart of it: The Curse of the Dance. That's it -- just substitute the name of your nation's show and you have it. The Curse is fully international and is omnipresent.
Yes, that's the one -- the curse that breaks up the marriages and relationships of half the people that take part every time that show is on. Sometimes it's immediate and the couple bursts into flames and explodes like a meteor hitting the atmosphere of public attention. But more often it's a slow burn and months later, when all is burned to cinders, the relationship is quietly put to sleep -- sent to the same farm in the country where dogs, cats and other pets are sent by parents trying to avoid heartache in their children.
I stared at her and forced a smile to my lips, which felt so frozen I was sure they would crack under the strain.
I looked at her like that as often as I could -- not frozen-faced like now, but staring at her, drinking in her beauty. Now in her early thirties like me, she was as beautiful as she had been when I had first seen her; golden hair curling around her shoulders, big brown eyes, perfect nose, bottom lip that begged to be sucked; all in a perfectly symmetrical face.
Below that was a lovely tight body with strong shoulders, C-cup tits, a flat belly that smoothed out into a narrow waist and then flared out into generous hips. For someone only five foot three, she had surprisingly long legs -- supple and strong.
I loved that body, but I loved the woman inside it more. She was usually fairly calm and tranquil -- unless she was annoyed or excited, at which times she could curse and swear up a storm that would have Billingsgate fish market traders running for cover -- and yet could sing with the dynamism and power of Janice Joplin. She was cool, quiet and contained and yet could burst into orgasm in a cursing, writhing, spitting, exploding fireball of energy. She was funny, kind, thoughtful and very clever. And she loved me and I loved her, and we both loved our perfect little Hellspawn -- known to everyone else as Beth -- our seven-year-old.
But, with all that perfect life on our side, Raven had now lit the fuse to a pyramid of gunpowder barrels that were going to make a spectacular bang when it blew me onto the garbage heap of life.
Raven -- the name the result of hippy parents who been astonished but delighted to have their first child in their late thirties. Apparently she was so-named because she had been born with jet-black hair -- and had then suckered everyone by going golden blond within five years.
"Raven, I'm speechless" I said, choosing my words carefully, trying desperately not to fall into trap number one -- the controlling partner trap, in which voicing dissent about something your wife dearly wants to do is being jealous, domineering and controlling.
"It starts in four weeks," she babbled in her enthusiasm. "We all get to meet up and then start training for the opening dance. I wonder who else is going to be on the show. Imagine if Paul Cunningham was on -- ooh that would be so cool."
Yeah, yeah, yeah... No! No it wouldn't!
Paul Cunningham was on her freebie list -- that list that almost every married person has -- five celebrities with whom they would be allowed to have sex with no comeback. Oh great. I hadn't even considered that might come up. The stack of gunpowder barrels grew higher.
"It sounds like a blast!" I said, my mind on that metaphor.
"I have to get measured up, and then hit the tanning salon. I can't go on the show looking like this -- even with fake tan, people would think it was a programme on ghost hunting. Next week there are three meetings with the stylists and choreographers." She hugged herself with excitement.
"Ah," I said thoughtfully. "So you've already accepted then?"
"Yes. They wanted an immediate answer, so I accepted."
"All sixteen people had to accept straight away? Wow. What are the odds of that actually happening?"
She looked puzzled. "I don't know what you mean."
I smiled and then frowned. "I mean, sixteen celebrities -- each probably with a calendar of things they are booked up for -- all expected to immediately agree or turn it down flat. I wouldn't have thought many celebrities would accept that deadline."
She wrinkled her cute nose. "Okay -- I suppose I didn't have to agree immediately. I guess I could have taken a couple of days to think about it. But I didn't need to! I knew that this could relaunch me -- and relaunch Dark Raven. I know where Barry and Gail are now, and I'm pretty sure they'd be more than happy for us to get back together. And I know you'd support me, so why..."
I said nothing. Not even a mutter about how I would have liked to have at least been consulted.
A crack appeared in her certainty as my silence extended uncomfortably. "Come on, Michael! You'd support me, wouldn't you? This could be the start -- the restart -- of something very big. It's everything I've ever wanted. You know that!"
Actually I didn't know that at all. After the way we'd met, I thought she just wanted the life we now had -- a family, a prosperous lifestyle, a house we loved which was full of love. This was the first I'd heard of 'getting the band back together'.
So here was trap number two. If I didn't support her, then I didn't love her. Women see things differently to men, I guess. How the trap actually worked was 'you just don't want me to (insert desire here) because you (choose optional reason from this long list) and therefore don't love me.'
Both traps were designed to force my hand -- every guy's hand. Again, not consciously, but kept in reserve in the dark recesses of the mind. Something learned, while never being actually taught, at the knees of their mothers.
When she had told me of the invitation to be on The Dance, my engineering mind had immediately gone into overdrive, weighing scenarios, options, weak points and accepted strengths, creating a flow diagram that started at the end result and worked backwards.
Of course, the possible end result that I feared most was our marriage splintering into tiny pieces, the three of us no longer in any emotional condition to live and love together, with me no longer able to share the life of the woman and the little girl who meant everything to me.
So that was the most nightmarish end result from my point of view, although there were a couple of alternatives that were almost as bad.
What then might lead to that result? The short answer -- an affair.
And the possible steps that could lead to such an affair? Her in an environment exciting enough to disturb calm reason, with me noticeably absent and unable to remind her of what we shared, where ongoing physical and mental stress could lead to some seriously bad decision-making. In other words... The Dance.
Using reason and informed guesswork I mentally calculated that there was a 58% chance that she would be tempted into thinking about it from week three, and a 2% chance of that temptation proving too much to refuse immediately. That was based on her probably reaching the halfway point in the knockout competition. After that the odds would increase by around 1.3% each week as the competition became more intense, reaching 19% if she made it all the way to the final.
Now most people would say that chance of a wife having an affair in such a situation being only 19% were pretty good odds really. Except those numbers were based on just one professional dance partner being involved. However, the male dancers in the show all were way above average in attractiveness -- and there were eight of them,
and
eight male celebrities. Taking into account upper age ranges and the outer limits of the homosexual arc on the sexual rainbow of those in the show, as well as my wife's proclivities, the odds of her resisting came in at -32%.
That was what my mind came up with in the couple of seconds after she made her announcement -- just a 32% chance that she would NOT have an affair. That meant if she went through the exact same scenario three times, two times out of three she would finish up fucking someone who was not me. Bad odds. Very bad.
And then there was the band thing, her wanting to reform Dark Raven. That was a whole different nightmare in which my mental gymnastics suggested that there would be only a very slight chance of us remaining married, and that didn't take into account the possibility of her touring a live show, in which case the odds went down to 0.00%
