Trying To Do The Decent Thing

Note: This story was written before the advent of easy access to internet porn.

Doing the decent thing.

If it had not been for the vasectomy I would have recognised the signs much sooner. After all, my wife Adele and I had already travelled the pregnancy road three times - four if you count that initial miscarriage. Yes - all the signposts were there, mainly the morning sickness but also including the significant tenderness of her breasts, (at certain times in any ordinary month, I knew not to squeeze her tits but during early pregnancy she could not even bear the slight pressure of my body against them.) This time it took me a long time to realise her condition but I think that is understandable - I mean, if you fire blanks from a revolver at a friend and he falls down, you assume that he is messing about and do not seriously consider the possibility that you have killed him.

Right at the start I thought that it was food poisoning, blaming the sea-food Adele had been the only one to eat on our last meal out and I put down her rather morose demeanour down to her feeling under the weather from the sickness. Her tender tits were harder to explain away and it was this factor which eventually prompted me to try a double check at the vasectomy clinic.

I think that a little bit of history is appropriate here. For the first three years of the marriage my wife was on the pill and this was an idyllically happy period. Then escalating side effects combined with scare stories in the press decided her to give it up. We had already been discussing starting a family, so what better time was there to start. Adele is pretty fertile so she copped for one pretty well straight away but this turned to be a false start with heartache and trauma. We persevered and in a relatively short time our first son was born. I had a horror of condoms so from then on we depended on the old coitus interruptus and a bit of safe period theory complemented by some oral and anal sex. The net result was that we had three children in just under five years. At that point, having found out what was causing them, (as they say), I booked into a private clinic and had the snip. For a week I felt as if I was carrying my balls round in a bucket but over the six years since then the memory has faded.

I entered the vasectomy clinic with very different emotions from the first time. The first time I had been filled with trepidation tempered with the belief that I was doing the responsible thing. Now I felt totally embarrassed. The girl on reception was just finishing varnishing her nails so I charitably allowed that it was necessity rather than rudeness, which prevented her from looking up straight away. I could not wait. "I had a vasectomy six years ago," I blurted out. "I would like a check to make sure that it really worked."

Now she did look up with a badly suppressed smirk and an 'Oh dear, not another one' expression on her face. She pressed the intercom to announce me as a Code 666 and ask if the doctor was free to see me. I did not hear his reply but apparently he was free because I was allowed through to his office. In contrast to his reception staff the doctor was very professional with a practised sympathetic manner. I gave my name and restated my case. He smiled and said, "Well at least it is not my handiwork that is in question because I have only been here for the last five years."

"I am not really questioning anybody's work. I have only really come for my own peace of mind."

"I understand that and we will of course do you a test free of charge as part of your original guarantee but I can assure you now that of all the men that we have re-tested, not one operation has been found at fault."

"All?" I repeated. "Have there been many?"

"Dozens - literally dozens while I've been working here." Then, seeing the shock on my face he qualified, "You must realise that in the same period we have performed hundreds of operations."

I was still shocked. I had gone there in the belief that I was possibly unique only to discover that I was only one out of an army of cuckolded men. By that I time I had realised that there was only a one in a million chance that I was the father of the child my wife was almost certainly carrying. However, I still went on with the test. It is a sign that I still had some resilience of spirit at that point, for when a very pretty nurse left me in an empty room give a sample; I wished she could have stayed to help me produce the semen.

As expected the test declared that it was 100% certain that I could not father a child - I waited for two hours at the clinic until the result could be told to me personally rather than have it posted to my home.

So - my wife had been unfaithful to me. This hurt but not as much as might be expected because I harboured a dark secret of my own. During those five long years when Adele had been almost exclusively a mother rather than a wife, there was one occasion on which I had strayed from the straight and narrow.

On a two day course away from home, drinking on lonely solitary splendour at the bar, I started chatting to a girl and very quickly it seemed, she was following me up to me room. I was envisioning a long night of badly needed passion but once in bed she seemed to go cold. We did have sex but very disappointing sex - it's no exaggeration to say that I have had more pleasure from my hand. She left shortly afterwards leaving me with a heavy weight on my conscience and all for virtually nothing. So you can see why I was not willing to condemn my wife out of hand for a sin that I had committed myself.

When we met, at nineteen, she was three years younger than me. We got on well but it was six months before we had full sex and we married a year after that. Then she was not particularly attractive with rather small breasts and on the thin side - but she did have exceptional legs. The years and motherhood have been kind to her. Now that she has mellowed, there are elements of true beauty in her face, she has filled out and her tits are better than many men could hope for. We live in a fairly small village where I manage the local estate agent office that handles the whole district -it may be limited but does produce a reasonable income. How would I describe myself? Imagine a 38-year-old estate agent, married for sixteen years and father to three pre-pubescent kids and you will not go far wrong.

When we discussed previous sexual experience, Adele admitted to one previous lover, the year before we met. She told me that he was the only son of a single parent mother who doted on him. The relationship lasted nine months, during the last six of which they had sex - but only once a fortnight when his mother attended an environmental concerns committee meeting. I did not need a calculator to work out that this amounted to little more than a dozen times altogether. As it happened this was only slightly more than my own tally over the years but I had accumulated my score as one-off occasions with different females. In a reversal of traditional sexual behaviour, all of my conquests lost interest as soon as they had their way with me. It was only after the marriage that Adele remembered to mention that she had actually lost her virginity at sixteen to some unknown male while stoned out of her mind at a party.

Despite the result of the test, I said nothing and it was not until three days later that things came to a head. When the kids were in bed, Adele poured two drinks, gave me one and sat down facing me. Her face seemed particularly drawn but I realised afterwards that this had been tension. "You really don't look well," I said. "You ought to see the doctor."

"I went to see him this morning," she told me, "I suppose you have guessed that I'm pregnant."

"I had come to that conclusion."

"You know there is very little chance that it's yours," she said meeting my eyes for the first time.

"That thought had crossed my mind as well," I said.

Adele took a long drink from her glass. I think that she had expected a barrage of questions and was at a loss how to continue. "Was it rape?" I asked. To explain this question I must tell you that I have very strong opinions on abortion believing that the only two possible justifications are danger to health or forced impregnation. I was checking for this option and also deliberately giving Adele an excuse because it is well known that the majority of women who are raped don't tell their partners about it.

She shook her head. "No - it wasn't rape."

"How long has the affair been going on?" I thought that it was the logical follow up question.

"It wasn't an affair either. I only went with him the one time - I mean, I only spent one night with him."

I could forgive this. I was after all, the direct equivalent my own transgression - when I took that girl to my room, my intent had been the same if not the actual fruition. I smiled to let my wife know that this had not upset me as much as she might have expected.

"He's called E..." she started to say but I held up a hand to stop her.

"I don't want to know any details at all," I said making an impromptu decision that I was to bitterly regret over the next two days. Some consolation can sometimes be drawn from knowing all the facts but there is an unlimited number of permutations that the ignorant mind can dredge up for self torment.

"I was thinking about adoption," she said hesitantly after a fairly long pause. I was not surprised that she had bypassed termination. Brought up as a Catholic, Adele fell most definitely in to the lapsed category but retained abhorrence of abortion and to a much lesser extent, contraception.

As it happened, I also had intense feelings about adoption. Before I met Adele, my older brother had fathered an illegitimate daughter who he had seen only once before she was handed to an adoption agency. Over the years I have though often of the little girl and wondered what had happened to her. I knew that I could never let a child of mine disappear to who knows where - so how could I demand such a sacrifice from the woman that I loved. "I will accept the child as mine - nobody need ever know any different," I said magnanimously, wanting only to bring back a hint of happiness to my wife's face. She did smile and kiss me lovingly but my words certainly had not lightened her load in the way that I had intended.

Over the next two days she seemed even more morose than before her confession - it puzzled me but I said nothing. We had spent a long quiet evening watching mediocre television and were preparing to go to bed when she suddenly grabbed me with tears streaming down her face and blurted out, "There's no chance of you pretending that the baby is yours Simon - because it won't be white."

That floored me and I think I stared at her with jaw hanging open in the traditional gob-smacked manner. Adele took a deep breath and said, "And while I am at it I have got to tell you that I have been with loads of other men during the past year."

Finally my anger broke through. "Been with, been with," I snarled. "Why use polite euphemisms when you have behaved like a bloody whore?"

"OK. Lots of men fucked me before Errol - is that what you want me to say," she snapped back but was then immediately contrite. "I'm sorry Simon you have every right to be upset. I don't know what to say."

Strangely I found a grain of hope in this new knowledge. "Perhaps one of the others might be the father," I suggested.

Adele shook her head sadly. "The timing is wrong and anyway it wouldn't make any difference because all of the others were black too."

"All of them?"

"Yes all of them. Every one."

"You had better tell me everything - right from the beginning," I said.

Adele folded her hands on her lap. "It started at Jenny's hen-night," she began.

I had better fill in a bit of background before relating what my wife had to say. For more than ten years on almost every Wednesday night, I had driven twenty miles into the city to spend the evening playing bridge. The session lasted from 7pm until 11pm with a half hour break during which the club provided tea and biscuits as part of the small entrance fee. During that period, Adele had her own evenings, at one time mother and child discussion groups, later whist or bingo in the village hall. For the past three years she had been on the committee which organised the village fair and later Xmas festivities. For a couple of years she went to parties from which I benefited. They were lingerie parties and the exotic underwear that Adele brought home certainly enlivened our sex life. Sadly these parties came to an abrupt end when the lady running them was found to have been giving private shows for some of the husbands - the objection was not to her modelling the underwear but the fact that she wore nothing at all. One night Adele brought home a vibrator. I could not understand why it was so unrealistically large, (she could only get about two thirds inside her), but it certainly enhanced our relationship. After foreplay involving this toy, an orgasm was guaranteed when, left to my own devices, I often failed to ring the bell.

Some eighteen months previously while supermarket shopping in the city, Adele bumped into an old friend called Carla, who she had not seen for over fourteen years and over a coffee they arranged to have a night out together. Early that Friday evening, my wife caught the bus into town to return by taxi at 1 am, very merry from the effects of alcohol but far from inebriated. She had enjoyed a marvellous time, in a group which comprised Carla's flat mate Jenny and a couple of other women friends.

"They have invited me to go out with them again next month," Adele told me and I was quite happy to agree until she told me how much her evening had cost. With thirty pounds spent on drink and food with more than that for the taxi home, I reckoned that it had been an expensive evening and warned her not to make a habit of it. I also pointed out that my Bridge club only cost two pounds for the evening. "Yes but what about your petrol there and back, every bloody week and you have been doing it for the last ten years. I would like to meet them regularly - so there!" my wife shot back.

I had to agree that I was being unreasonable but then I had another cause for unease when Adele told me that her new friends called themselves the 'ex-wives club' after the film. I pointed out that she was not an ex wife and said that I didn't want her picking up the habits of women who had no ties - meaning from a morals point of view. Adele laughed. "They call themselves that as a joke because they've all been married before but both Fay and Gloria have new husbands, Jenny is getting married in about six months and Carla has got a fiancé working in Saudi Arabia. You've no need to worry my love because it is perfectly respectable. At the disco last night there were men hovering about but we all danced with each other and anyway, most times they all congregate in Carla's flat, get booze in from the off-licence and spend the evening chatting and listening to CD's. It's a girl thing."

So she started having her night out and after a few months it came time for Jenny's marriage and the regular night out was made into a hen night with a lot of other female friends and acquaintances involved. Jenny was booked into the hotel where the party was to be held for the night, with her mother on hand to guard her chastity. This left Jenny's own bed at the flat free so Adele was invited to stay overnight there, to travel home by bus on the Saturday morning, saving the horrendous taxi fare. The following month, she again stayed over and the greatly reduced travelling expenses were now matched by my wife spending far less than before on drinks. So when Adele pointed out that as her costs were now so little, she could afford a night out every two weeks instead of four, I was happy to agree. My ulterior motive in appearing so amenable was that I had taken to watching the after midnight movies on the X-rated channel.

At no time did I have any reason to suspect that anything was amiss. The way that she dressed gave no clue, possibly a trifle more daring than for a village fete but well within the bounds of respectability. I reckon that thousands of women have worn clothes far more sexually explicit and yet finished up a damn sight more chaste. In retrospect there is only fact which I now think had significance and that is that our sexual habits changed. For years Saturday had been our day for love-making but now sex disappeared from the agenda for that day - at least on the Saturdays following her nights away.

Following that opening remark about the hen night, Adele had stopped and said that as there was a lot to tell we should get drinks or a cup of tea and make ourselves comfortable before she continued. I agreed and some ten minutes later, settled myself for what I knew it would give me no pleasure to hear.

"At the start I did not like the party," my errant wife began again, "There were too many women crammed together in a small space, some I knew vaguely but most not at all. I also found the atmosphere rather childish with too much loud laughter and lots of puerile smutty jokes of the kind I used to giggle at behind the bike sheds when I was at school. Very quickly I was wishing that the evening could have been for our own small compact group and then finding out that the main event was to be three male strippers pleased me not at all. I could understand why men enjoy watching a female stripper but the prospect of watching a man remove his clothes left me cold. My antipathy increased when the first act came on because it provoked a bedlam of 'Get en off' cries and vulgar whistles from all parts of the room. He had a weasel face, bright ginger hair and he was short and stocky. He got down to the raw amazingly quickly and then strutted about puffing himself up into stereotyped poses with suggestions coming from the audience, phrased in language that I thought only the worst sort of man would use."

She took a quick glance ay my face before explaining, "I had always believed that male strippers retained some cover and if not only displayed a limp penis briefly at the end of the act. The fact that this was a private party probably explains the difference but all three of these performers sported a full erection virtually from the start of their turn. I was amazed by the size of this first man's prick and assumed that he must be a freak and only performing because of that fact. I may be naïve but up until then I had always believed that you were pretty average - you see David my first was even smaller than you - and yours and his were the only two cocks I had ever seen. Since then I have discovered that God was not very kind to at all in that way my love."

Adele paused to light a cigarette. "The next one was black - a young bloke, no more than early twenties. He was very fit with all his muscles clearly delineated. Without his clothes, he shone as if polished and I assumed that he must have oiled himself but since then I have found that black people have a natural sheen to their skin. His cock was even bigger than the guy with ginger hair and it looked perfect. It is a funny thing to say about a man but he was beautiful. He was very agile and walked about on his hands doing the splits in both directions and while he was performing, in contrast to the first act, there was total silence. I glanced around quickly and saw that all eyes were riveted upon him and that every woman without exception was licking her lips. I was feeling hot and bothered myself but put that down to the novelty of the situation. He finished his act by standing still as a statue and using muscle power alone, moved his stiff cock to one side then the other, than up and then down. Deservedly he made his exit the thunderous applause."