My father and mother had finally gotten divorced. It had been a really rocky marriage for many years now, and their separation was long overdue. At least that's what my sister and I felt. But mom and dad, despite the vast gulf between them, figured they'd invested twenty years in their marriage and were reluctant to admit failure. I could understand that, but, still, the constant misery they'd been putting each other through for years made it very clear to me and Peg that mom and dad just weren't meant for each other anymore. And probably never were in the first place.
Though I'd been close to my mom when I was young, as I became older a gulf began to develop between us. She couldn't stand watching me grow up and become a woman. As long as I was her little baby girl, a girl she could both coddle and control, everything was okay. But once I entered adolescence, showing independence, maturing and developing my sexuality, my mother, for some reason, just couldn't stand it. And the same went for my sister, who was a year younger than me. Though Peg, watching me go through all that warfare with mom, was better prepared to just step back and avoid mom's irrational outbursts and rampages.
My relationship with my father was very different, however. Peg and I had always been daddy's little girls, and that never stopped. He pampered us when we were children and encouraged us to express ourselves and develop in our own ways as we matured. He loved watching us turn into adolescents, and then into young women, proud to see his girls blossom and mature.
And so in recent years, while my mom and I had finally resolved some of our very real conflicts, I still couldn't help take my dad's side in his ongoing battle with mom. He tried to be a good husband, but she just wouldn't let him. And I always sensed that while dad was a very warm, very physical and, probably, very sexual man, mom was something of a cold fish. Her own mom was like that and I think she just inherited the trait. She had empathy for the poor and the oppressed, but found it hard to be tender or comforting to those close to her. It seemed like a chore she would only do reluctantly for mom to caress me and my sister when we needed that, needed a mother's comfort. While dad was always there for us, soothing us when we were upset, wrapping a protective arm around us when we yearned for that.
And now, finally, they had split. Dad had moved out of their house a couple of weeks ago and was staying in a hotel. But that was getting expensive, I knew, and I was sure it was lonely. He had a bid out on a condo he was seeking to purchase, but it would be at least a month or two before that would become available. So I suggested to dad that he stay with me. I had a two-bedroom apartment and my roommate had moved out recently to take a job up in Alaska. I told dad he could move in with me until he got settled. He asked me if I was sure I wanted to do this, that it might be uncomfortable having one's father in the next bedroom, how would guys I dated feel about that? Wouldn't it constrain me? But I told him, no. I loved my dad and I wanted to be there for him in this, his time of need.
"Me and Peg were always curious, dad, but we never thought we could ask you about it, you know how that subject can be," I probed. "But mom and you? You two didn't have much of a sex life, did you?"
My sister and I had, in fact, long been intensely curious about this. Mom had seemed like a cold fish to us, but you never know what happens behind closed doors. Cold fishes can sometimes really heat up. Though we doubted it in mom's case. There was just something so reserved about her. And we never heard noises or anything coming from their bedroom, even when we were little and they were young. Hell, at forty dad still seemed young to me. That's another thing, all these years he's had this youthful aura about him while mom acted like she hated her youthfulness, was wasting it. She was a real beauty when she was young, and she still had her looks, but it's like she was bitter about her lost youth, like she felt she had wasted it on dad.
"To be frank, honey, no," dad said. "I mean you know how gorgeous your mother is, how she was a beauty queen when I first met her. I guess I was just blinded by all that."
My mom, I'll admit, has always been a real looker, and when she and dad met she had just been selected as a runner-up in a statewide beauty contest. Dad told me that, like a lot of young guys, he only paid attention to looks then. And so they met at eighteen, and at nineteen were married, mom already pregnant with me. Mom was a real peach, everyone said so, and guys flocked around her in droves. So dad felt lucky, he said, when he won her over. He figured he had won himself quite a prize.
But over the years that prize had begun to seem more like a booby prize as mom's true nature was revealed.
"So you didn't do it too much, huh?" I probed further, feeling remarkably comfortable for some reason as I began to talk to dad about his sex life with my mom.
"No, not too much, even when we were younger," he admitted.
"Mom just wasn't into it?"
"I'm afraid not."
I wasn't surprised to hear this and, for some reason, it actually made me happy. I was sort of glad to learn that my dad had never really found sexual satisfaction with his wife, my mother. Maybe that was selfish of me but, still, it made me feel good.
"So did you go out on her much, dad? Did you have affairs?" I asked boldly as he squirmed a little in his chair.
"Some," he admitted. "Yeah, I did."
"Did mom know? Did she ever find out?"
"She found out a couple of times, and we had some real battles over that before she sort of came to accept it. But I had to get love somewhere, honey."
"Yeah dad, I know you did," I said sympathetically. "Because I bet you've always been a real sexy guy. And horny too."
There! I said it! I got it out of my system. I'd long thought this about my father, that he was a really sexual animal, and that all that carnality was wasted on my mother. I couldn't believe mom didn't respond to dad's vividly alluring masculinity, his sheer, raw sexiness. Even my girlfriends used to say to me how they thought my dad was a real stud. They said my mom was gorgeous and all, but they'd never mention anything about her seeming sexy. Because she wasn't.
Dad smiled at me now. It's like he actually got a kick having me ask him whether he was a horny dude.
"Yeah, sweetheart, that's one thing I have to admit," he said. "I've always had a hell of libido. I guess you can say I'm 'horny'."
Just hearing him say that thrilled me. Your own father, whom you adore, admitting how he's got a potent libido! And now that he was separated from mom and on his own, I figured he was hornier than ever!
"So what kind of women did you mess around with? Did I ever meet any of them?" I quizzed further.
Now dad filled me in, happy to be getting some of this off his chest. One of these women he mentioned I knew real well because she happened to be our next door neighbor. I used to play with her kids when I was young. Like dad, she was unhappily married and I guess they had found each other in their time of need. He told me how he'd sneak over there, just twenty feet from our own house, when Shirley's husband was at work or out of town.
"Did mom ever find out about Shirley?"
"No, that's one she never knew nothing about."
It's a good thing too, because mom still lived next door to Shirley and her husband!
Suddenly I noticed what time it was.
