I would like to thank my Sweet Inspiration blackrandl1958 for organizing this event, and her editing.
If a woman wants to cheat she needs to be reasonably attractive, not too fussy and the definition of “reasonably attractive” varies proportionately with how fussy she is.
You’d think it would be similar for men, but sex is usually a seller’s market for women, so a less attractive woman has a better chance of hooking up with a more attractive man than the reverse.
Beyond mere physical attractiveness there is a more important factor: money.
Despite decades of women’s liberation, dating expenses are still borne overwhelmingly by the man, so if a woman wants to cheat, she simply has to be available to her target audience, whereas a man must have access to funds that he doesn’t have to account for to his partner.
Which brings me to my story.
After a relatively short period of marriage, my wife Sheila’s sex drive went from a Porsche to a VW Beetle. At first I accepted it as the lot of the married man. “Not tonight, Honey, I have a headache,” didn’t become a cliché for no reason. I soon discovered; however, that she was cheating on me. How I found out isn’t pertinent to my story, just trust me that she was.
At first, I was actually happy, believe it or not. I thought that it might be a sign of her renewed interest in sex and that I might reap the benefit, but no, any renewed interest she might have had in sex didn’t involve me.
This is where my opening remarks come into play. While I could always play the revenge affair game, and there were certainly women that I would find attractive who might feel the same about me, there was the problem of paying for the prelude to sex. Unless she was a slut, which wasn’t what I was looking for, a certain amount of wining and dining would be required, and that takes money.
As with many couples, we lived paycheck-to-paycheck, and there wasn’t much excess that I could siphon off.
Divorce was out of the question. Neither of us could live nearly as well separately as we could together, and since I made more than she did, I would probably have to pay her maintenance. So I resigned myself to turning a blind eye to her infidelity and took myself in hand, so to speak.
One of my favorite fantasies; no, not that kind, involved winning the lottery. I often drifted off to sleep making my plans for what I would do with all that money, only to wake up just as broke as when I went to sleep. That still didn’t stop me from faithfully buying tickets, even buying an extra one or two when the jackpots grew super-large.
I always bought quick-picks, so I had to check my tickets to see whether I won or not. I never really expected to win even a secondary prize, let alone a jackpot, so I was surprised when I went to the lottery web site and saw that my first two numbers matched. I sat up a little straighter and carefully checked and double-checked each number, then pinched myself. I had won!
I saw on the TV that the only winning ticket was sold in our town. I was a six hundred millionaire.
I started making plans, but first I had to talk to Sheila.
“Sheila, we need to talk.”
“Isn’t that supposed to be my line?” she said laughing.
“Ha-ha,” I said, “but you’re on the right track. I want a divorce.”
She looked stunned for a moment.
“Surely it can’t be because of my cheating. I know you’ve known about it for months, and it hasn’t bothered you before.”
“Why do you think it never bothered me?”
“You never said anything, you never did anything.”
“What could I say or do? If I told you to stop you would have just laughed in my face. I couldn’t afford to take other women out, most women want to be wined and dined, I’m sure you’re familiar with that.”
She had the decency to blush.
“The only other option was divorce, and splitting our finances would only hurt both of us, although I’m sure you could arrange for some ‘assistance.'”
“So what has changed? Why do you think you can afford to divorce me now?”
“This,” I said as I slid a photocopy of the winning ticket over to her. I wasn’t about to give her the original, though I had already signed it anyway.
“You have a lottery ticket. Big deal, so don’t millions of other people.”
“Not like this one. This is the winning ticket in last night’s Powerball, six hundred million dollars. Of course it’ll be less if we take it in a lump sum and after taxes.”
“I suppose you’re going to try to cheat me out of my share?”
“Why do cheaters project onto others? No, as much as I would like to, I really can’t be bothered, Half will do me nicely.”
She was lost in thought.
“What do we do now?” she finally said.
“We get lawyers.”
“Why plural? Why not share one?”
“There’s no need to pinch pennies. By each having our own we guarantee that each of our interests are protected.”
She saw my point. We got our lawyers, agreed on the splitting of our other meager assets, took our shares of the lottery prize and went our separate ways.
Taking the prize in a lump sum, and after taxes, we each walked away with around two hundred million dollars.
I immediately put a hundred and fifty million in a super safe income-producing fund. Even if it only yielded 1%, it would give me a million and a half annually forever, more if I reinvested part of it.
The other fifty million would be “mad money,” the money that I could use to fulfill my wildest dreams.
The first thing I did was what any red-blooded American male with more money than sense, and whose most frequent sex partner was his own right hand would do: I went out to get laid.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t as easy as many seem to think. I didn’t have, nor want, a neon sign over my head flashing “Rich Dude,” and I didn’t give off Brad Pitt or Jason Momoa vibes when I went into the clubs. I had a “Dad bod,” though I’m not a dad, and though I got my share of dances, I didn’t get much interest in follow-up activities.
I thought of hiring an escort, but that’s also not as easy as you might think. Oh, I found many links on a Google search, but most didn’t look too reputable, and I was afraid of downloading a virus, or worse. I did take a flier on a couple, and while not horrible, and I did get my rocks off, again, it wasn’t like the stories. None of the women were particularly classy, I could feel the disapproving stares when we walked into any place respectable, and the “love-making” was barely acceptable sex.
One thing I did do was buy a large condominium and move out of the hotel I’d been living in since we sold our house. I hired a personal trainer; a man, I didn’t want any distractions, and with his guidance, I fitted out one of the rooms as a workout room. After six months of torture, he had me in about as good a shape as I was going to be in. I still wasn’t going to strike awe into anyone, but the Dad bod was gone, and any failure to attract women would be all on my sparkling personality, or lack thereof.
Now that I was in shape, and with weekly visits from my trainer to hopefully maintain it, I hired a fashion consultant to re-do my wardrobe and overall appearance. I also took dance lessons, and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it.