(Before Monogamy)
My mom keeps sending me weird texts. Texts like: Do you remember your dad bringing Rebecca to any concerts? and Do you know dad’s computer password? He is in a meeting or I would ask him. I don’t understand what this means. The fact that Rebecca is my dad’s receptionist isn’t a good sign.
(After Monogamy)
Luke is my husband. Luke grew up in the Evangelical Church, where watching porn is extremely discouraged. When Luke was caught watching porn for the first time, his parents bought him a book written by Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker called Every Young Man’s Battle. Luke and his dad would spend every Monday before school going through the book together. Here is a quote from the book’s foreword, written by Stereo Motion band members (a Christian rock and roll group):
“The closing song on our first album is titled ‘The One’ and is written to the women God already has selected to be our brides when His timing is complete. It expresses the commitment each of us has made to keep himself sexually pure for his future wife--and offers a prayer that she is doing the same.”
(Before Monogamy )
My freshman year of college seems like the perfect place to get it all out of my system. I start saying Yes! to all sexual proposals and/or exchanges.
On Tinder:
–If you want, I can pick you up from your dorm and we can drive around and see what happens?
–Yes!
In a messy, small fraternity house:
–I’ll let you have this whole bottle of tequila if you and your roommate give me head.
–Yes!
–...Yes!
In an apartment complex:
–Want a free t-shirt?
–Yes!
–Okay, come up to my room.
–Wait, what kind of t-shirt?
–It’s an old formal shirt, light blue with a palm tree on it.
–Okay, then yes!
My mom keeps calling me. She never stops calling me. My stomach drops every time I answer and she tries to tell me. I fake a dropped call, or tell her I’m too busy. I don’t want the words to come yet. I don’t want to know what Rebecca and my dad have been up to. I want to keep meeting new people, I want to keep kissing girls in bar bathrooms, I want to keep an exclamation point at the end of my yes!
(After Monogamy)
When Luke got older and porn became more readily available, his parents thought Every Young Man’s Battle might not be enough to keep him from the evil of the internet. They signed up for an internet surveillance service called Accountable2you. Any time Luke googled something suspicious, sent a Snapchat with a dirty word, or texted his friend the word “boobs” it immediately notified his parents.
What’s strange to me, is for a long time, Luke appreciated his parents for this intervention. He appreciated it so much that even when he moved out of the house, he continued paying for an Accountable2you subscription on his own.
During this Accountable2you and Every Young Man’s Battle era, Luke was in high school. He loved being on drumline. He didn’t have much luck with sports, so he joined the marching band and winter line at school. Luke became an exceptional drummer. Rhythm was a large part of his childhood. Luke grew up tapping on desks, windows, and most commonly, his upper thigh. It was a way to still his mind, to contemplate, to find consistency in his own fingers.
During junior year, Luke was asked to turn down winter line so he could play drums for the worship team at the megachurch. Luke felt that leading worship was a greater calling, so he gave his winter line spot away.
A month into playing drums for a church whose congregation is 11,000 strong, Luke felt an enormous, mounting pressure to be pious. So, the first time he watched porn after joining the worship team, it was not enough for his parents to chastise him.
Luke met with the worship leader and told him what happened. Told him he was scared to tell anyone, but he couldn’t live with the guilt and wanted to get better. The worship leader listened and said he would get back to Luke about all this.
Luke had a couple more meetings with people in leadership, including the head pastor. They came to the conclusion that Luke should not play drums on the worship team for six months.
(Before Monogamy)
I have to bail my roommate out of the holding cell on campus. Something about having sex in public where she was caught on camera. As my roommate is filling out her discharge paperwork, my mom calls. She is crying and whispers into the receiver:
–Your dad is having an affair.
Dad texts: Can we talk?
I text: I need some time to think about everything.
My recently freed public sex roommate and I decide it’s best to go on a little bender??—a little frat boy, natty light, one-hitter, one too many dabs, “yes!” bender. I give a frat boy in a penguin costume a blow job on the fire escape, I shotgun a Four Loko like I have a death wish, I go into rooms that are only lit with a blue hue. I can’t tell what drugs are on the table, everything is frat-boy-neon-blue.
It’s raining when public sex roommate and I walk home. I find a turkey leg on the sidewalk, I hold it in the air like a prize. We start to run, my arm fully extended with the turkey leg, we are screaming and galloping home in the rain. I take a bite of the turkey leg and chuck it back towards the frat house, a parting gift for the boys in the blue room.
(After Monogamy)
The first time Luke tells me, I want to laugh. I have watched my fair share of lesbian tribbing porn but never felt the need to confess this to anyone.
He lays on his back and looks at the ceiling fan. Tears fall down his temples and into his dark, curly hair. He keeps saying how sorry he is, how this has always been a problem, how he’s sorry for hurting me.
I hold him for a long time, surprised at how much of his body I can squeeze into the corners of mine. I tell him it doesn’t matter to me. But, I can see it still matters to him.
(Before Monogamy)
I wake up in my dorm and my hands smell like meat. I grab public sex roommate to go down to the dining hall. We take the elevator, and when it opens, I see my dad.
My dad is standing in front of me and says he would like to talk. My public sex roommate neatly exits to the dining hall.
My dad and I sit down at a table in the lobby of my dorm. I am trying my best to look so angry, but really I am just so sad. My dad looks at me, but I have never seen him cry so I don’t recognize his face. He tells me of the resolve he has come to. How things are already different. How everything will be okay.
–I think that’s bullshit.
My dad’s tears dissipate, completely vanish. All the softness evaporates, and now he is the one who looks angry. He is angry he did not convince me. He is angry this is not fixed.
So, he turns to me. He asks,
–What about your bullshit? What about the boys you used to sneak over? What about the boy who lived in our neighborhood who used to come over after I was asleep?
(After Monogamy)
Since this is Luke’s first time, I let him pick the song to lose it to. He decides on Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away” because Top Gun was his favorite movie as a kid.
Before Terri Nunn can sing, “Walking in slow motion…” Luke is finished and on the bed and we are giggling so hard.
We let the song keep playing on a loop. We fall asleep to the rhythm of Berlin.
(Before Monogamy)
I think the hardest part of the affair is the memory revision my mind is going through. I have to physically insert the affair in the picture when I think back on the past two years. Any memory with my dad now has a hazy outline of Rebecca in it.
When he taught me how to drive, she was on his mind. When he came to my volleyball games after work, she was the last person he had said goodbye to. When he got home and hugged me, she was the last person he had hugged. She had been all over me all the time and I didn’t even know it.
Before we found out about the affair, Rebecca took up little space in my mind. She would sit by us at church. She taught me how to swim for my lifeguard training. My dad gifted her his white pick-up truck because she was young and didn’t have the money to buy her own car. Nothing about her, or how my dad talked about her, ever seemed significant.
But now, she is always here. I think about her round face and her athleisure clothes. I think about the gap in between her teeth and how she always smiled at me when I visited my dad at work. I want to dive into that gap. I want to lift my hands up above my head, put my palms together, and fit through her two front teeth. I want her to chew on me like I’ve been chewing on her. I want to swim deeper into her mouth and whisper, “I still love him so much” into the pink echoes of her throat, so she knows.
(After Monogamy)
–Watch any good porn lately?
This is my new approach to Luke’s guilty conscience. I think if I approach the subject leisurely and with blasé humor, he won’t feel so bad. Maybe I won’t have to forgive him so often, maybe I won’t be the one in charge of salvation.
–Nope. I’ve been doing really good lately.
Dope as hell, I think. When Luke answers no, that means we get to have sex. When he answers yes, it means no sex and a lot of comforting and reminding him there is nothing wrong with his body or with the way he interacts with it.
I sit on the bed with Luke and start kissing his cheeks. Every time I start, I think, I could do this forever. I could keep rubbing my nose against his stubble and finding new places for my lips to fit on his face. He is the most beautiful boy I’ve ever gotten to taste. Even his cheeks are precious to me, are enough to keep me going. I think about the other boys I’ve been with, the way they made me feel like an animal, a heifer they couldn’t corral to the right place. Left in the pasture to find her way back on her own. And I think about Luke and—
–I can’t do this, I lied to you.
Luke stands up and he’s already crying, staining his cheeks.
I feel confused, but calm because he’s never lied before. There’s always been a sort of formal confession.
–I watched porn, I am so, so sorry. I’m so sorry.
I motion Luke back to the bed and hold his face in my lap while he gets it all out. I watch his cheeks get red and his temples tighten. I watch as he tries to catch his breath, while I’m unable to offer any kind of condolence. I’ve had men spit in my face during sex and ask me to leave right after they finish. I don’t know what to do with this boy. I don’t know how to hold his piousness.
(Before Monogamy)
When I finally start answering my mom’s phone calls, my stomach develops a constant burning, an anger. I’m surprised because this anger isn’t pointed at my dad, but at her.
I try to stop the burning in my stomach, but it keeps coming. I can’t tell her this, I can’t add to her pain. I’m the only one on the line, I think. It seems like everyone else has stopped listening to her, has stopped trying to empathize.
She visits me in my dorm to get away. We watch a movie, but we have to stop when the main character is caught cheating on their spouse. Her face gets so pink when she cries, the birthmarks on her face turn an even darker pink, everything is pink except her eyes. Her eyes are the most beautiful blue when she cries, the pink only makes them brighter. All this time I am looking at the pink and blue on her face and I’m trying to absorb it all. I hold her close to my chest while she cries, but I still feel angry.
I feel angry that I’m holding this pain with her. That she keeps revealing details that add to the burning in my stomach. I’m so mad she didn’t see it. I’m so mad she’s telling me every story of my dad and Rebecca, nothing omitted. I don’t want to share this outrage with her, I don’t want to hate my dad.
After that visit, when her name appears on my phone, the anger turns to anxiety. I can’t will myself to answer. I can’t talk her out of divorce anymore. I can’t listen to her cry as she repeats the stories again, it hurts so bad. I don’t want to repeat my refrain,
–Mom, this has nothing to do with you or what you did. This is about dad and his issues,
Just for her rebuttal,
–I must have done something. There must have been something.
(After Monogamy)
Luke and I made a sex tape. It lives in Luke’s private phone album. Now every time he shows his mom a picture I giggle to myself, knowing our secret is close to her eyes. Giggling because what would Accountable2you send to her if Luke still had it downloaded on his phone?
Sometimes I get home from work and catch Luke watching it on the couch. Sometimes we watch it together. This seems to be a productive exercise in terms of untangling Luke’s shame.
Tonight we want to watch it together. Luke opens his private album, but I notice our video isn’t the only media in the album anymore. My heart sags a bit as I realize there are pictures of another person. Just two pictures of a woman posing naked for some kind of photoshoot, her perfect nipples burning two holes in my brain.
I don’t know what to say. Luke is panicking a bit and offers up some information. He says she’s a trans woman who happens to be an influencer. She posted these pictures on her story and he wanted to keep them. He didn’t want them to disappear into the abyss. He wanted to look at them again. He had just forgotten about them. He didn’t remember they were there.
I don’t know how to go about this. Three years of trying to help Luke to a place where he doesn’t feel bad for desire. Three years of encouraging him to watch porn every once in a while. Three years of holding his body when his shame became overwhelming.
So why does this hurt? Why is this woman choking me out? Why did he save it to our album? Our secret album?
I keep giggling as he takes the phone out of my hands. I keep giggling and tears are streaming down my face. I can’t stop crying. I can’t stop seeing her nipples. I want to be so proud of Luke. I want to look at him and praise him. I want to praise him for screenshotting these beautifully framed nudes. I want to praise him for having such great taste.
But I can’t stop crying. I can’t stop putting my clothes back on.
To exist, naked, in the same space as her, feels overwhelming. To exist in his private album together feels like I will never exist alone for him again. Or that I maybe have never existed alone for him. I feel my body going stale. Every time he sees me naked it’s drying up, it’s crusting over. Every time he feels my body, he knows what dips and peaks are coming next. He can anticipate my body now.
And I guess this is what marriage is. Absorbing one another again and again until we feel the same. Until we feel like only an outsider can ripple us again, can tell us where our curves start. Can swim out of our voice that has become so entangled, and tell us something new. But when I reread this paragraph, I think, that’s bullshit.
–I must have done something, there must have been something.
My own mother’s refrain echoes in my head. As if it’s a woman’s job to troubleshoot desire. As if it’s my job to take it in the ass for one man, resolve another man’s sin, and forgive yet another man for adultery.
I look at Luke after I am fully clothed, and ask,
–Can we still have sex?
But it doesn’t seem like this is of any interest to him. I start to undress anyway. Not ready to make any resolve. Not ready to make any conclusions about marriage, especially our marriage.
Luke deletes the pictures out of his private album and puts his phone away. I lay my nose on his cheek and am swallowed by my own desire. I am ready for my own salvation.
Brooke Spalding Ford is a writer and artist who lives in Kansas City, Missouri. She is pursuing her MFA in poetry and hybrid works. She lives with her husband and two cats under a mountain of books which are always dusty because she hates dusting.