I Wouldn't Call Her a Hooker Until Ch. 01

"Captain Royce of the campus police will be right beside the hairy beast," I said thoughtfully, continuing to mastermind my plotted fiasco. "Seat him, the Provost and my wife on the front row just below center stage."

"Damn!" Grace exclaimed. "Damn! Damn! Damn! I should have seen it coming!" She was slapping her forehead with the palm of her hand.

You had to love Grace.

"Violence begets civilization!" she whispered, her eyes glowing with anticipation.

"Violence ends civilization," some wag contributed from the shadows.

Yes! You had to love Grace.

Speaking of love in all of the myriad of variations, I must confess that I misled the lads and lasses of my faculty who were harnessed into the daily drudge with me. They understandably had followed the lead of the Provo in assuming that I was hamstrung by the authority that funded the history chair I so proudly administered.

They also conveniently assumed that I shortsightedly had failed to appreciate my wife's superiority. No offense was intended when my colleagues expressed puzzlement that I had won a prize like Vernon.

No doubt! She was a paragon of Marxist brilliance and Santa Monica Boulevard depravity, the only prized accomplishments in the 21st Century.

"Your wife is so classy to be so sexy," the more insensitive sods would say. "Remarking on Vernon's academic honors always seemed to imply that I was too stupid to see her marketable sensuality."

All definitions of excellence in their world insanely equated with marketable sensuality. They would direct every 18-year-old cheerleader to a personnel office in Pahrump. My contempt for Vernon had grown into a brickbat, like those favored by "demonstrators," thugs who broke our windows and smashed our campus statuary.

Marriage to Vernon is tantamount to studying philosophy without reading Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Essentially, her academic brilliance has no foundation.

Face the paradox of all paradoxes. She is a brilliant lawyer. But her mentality has no intuitive substance. Wiping successfully after a comforting urination or multiple partner intercourse has no more meaning for her than winning a verdict for the Provost.

We produced two average children in 20 years. I know, therefore, that her madness for rutting had at least one human result. My reaction to the thought of having sex with Vernon after the Fourth of July picnic begs two questions. How? Why?

Most certainly I am aware of the ironies inherent in this conundrum. Vernon, being the exemplary 21st century woman, meets all of the criteria for sexual perfection specified by the preponderance of hedonistic writers in the era of pure freedom.

Incredibly, given that as a truth, I am repelled if not sickened by the thought of sex with Vernon. Just as incredibly, I am anxiety ridden at the thought of never again having sex with her. Obviously, "love" in Vernon's 21st Century flashes neon pink.

To be sure, I am aware and appreciative of this absurdity. Imposing absurdity upon absurdity, I can envision Vernon in the image of Mother Eve, both oblivious to the misery their prized curse has produced.

Orgasms that seek a center to the universe in the Marxist balance have no reward and always betray the core values.

Vernon understands and emulates the whore factor in the story of Mother Eve's "Fall from Grace." Both Vernon and her "Mother Eve" have enjoyed succumbing to the call of the "gash" and the lure of lurid adventures with "bad boys."

After the child bearing years and on the mark of her earning junior partner stripes, my wife changed radically. Suddenly her closest friends, all lawyers and paralegals at her law firm, rode Harleys, smoked dope and shot "H".

They incessantly boasted of their odyssey through the kinks and quirks of orgies and erotic festivals. Of course, I knew I would ever be suspect as a man if I failed to kill them in the first instance; but for many reasons, I gritted my teeth and did nothing.

Indefatigable in marathon rutting with her own personal Satans, Vernon had quickly developed severe nausea if a cutting edge emotion like love occurred during a beastly orgasm. Counterintuitively, so say her coconspirators in circus sex, Vernon fanatically proclaimed that she found her "salvation and reason for being" in the tame sex in her own bedroom with her husband. Here she flings another paradox.

She once defined love as "the tenth orgasm between midnight and dawn." Her audience at the party asked how many lovers she required to achieve her goal.

Obviously, the conclusion inferred by these disparate facts and impressions dictated a divorce with all possible dispatch. Rationality, however, doth make cowards of us all. I have delayed pulling the trigger to the point of humiliation.

Sex with Vernon, furthermore, has no equal, I am certain. Perversely, I cannot evade the question raised when Mother Eve shagged Satan.

Does "just sex" have intrinsic meaning?

If not, we must assume that the orgasm could be superseded by an exquisite grade of ice cream.

If so, those campus authoritarians who have authored the chapters of the culture governing the 21st Century, must quickly concoct a philosophy. They must elucidate at least one rule that makes their mandates of "only sex" and "no taboos or mores" justifiable as well as understandable.

So perfectly dosed in the conventional wisdom of the 21st Century mechanistic is Vernon.

Systematically though imperceptibly Vernon had shed her propensity for guilt or shame. Intuitional responsiveness had become a sacrilege. She enthusiastically supported atheist activists and encourage euthanasia advocates.

We had avoided coming to swords' point on these subjects until recently.

My 19th Century core values were beginning to pose end-game problems. I confessed that I was the apostate. Once I took the doctoral certificate, moreover, I unmasked my lying, sneering façade and professed my contempt for their curriculum.

As we both pushed 40, we became eager to address questions that have destabilizing answers. Obvious we misread the inference, and the eagerness to engage had come forth from the desire to break the bonds. Vernon's bond breaking envisioned "Open Marriage" while my effort sought to put the thing out of its misery.

We got together because I had miscalculated the degree, scope and quality of her intuitive understanding and commitment. Swindlers always begin with the packaging, and Vernon proved to be an artist at gift wrapping.

Most books will never equal their covers in conveying their messages. Vernon, by that same truth, can never claim the high ground in defending her integrity, but she talks a fantastic game. Her parking lot gangbangers, however, undoubtedly would dispute my conclusions.

"Vernon loves you and will fight to keep her home and family," said Grace. "But you must make an effort to understand her as a complex woman who will never compromise."

As ludicrous as this might seem, it gets worse. They just keep coming.

Vernon's motivation in hooking me obviously lay in the fact that I was the youngest prof to net $200,000 at this rudderless behemoth of a state university. Obviously, the wife of a department chairman who also held a prestigious money chair presumably would have an edge in law school.

When Vernon learned that I was earmarked to assume the mantle of Dean of The New School of Social Sciences, I moved to the top of her prospect list. I was upward bound with the smooth certainty of an elevator at Trump Tower.

Purposefully I have painted my wife as cunning and calculating. But I would never have called her a hooker before the last Fourth of July.

Precisely at 2 p.m. that day Vernon had happily mutated into a whore who only incidentally was cunning and calculating. Her colleagues, when the time for her defense came, had ludicrously sought to immunize her on the bizarre brief that their collective insanity had raised $10 million for charity. Later, they revised that to $22 million.

Also offered as trial balloons for amnesty were the "too much holiday booze" and "it was only sporting good time sex."

Their claiming immunity under a plea of "innocent ribald holiday fun" didn't wash with me, either. At the time, however, I found it personally advantageous not to betray immediately that I was not laughing.

"It is nothing more than some special colleagues indulging in a bit of innocent erotic fun," Vernon had said with a degree of smug arrogance. She did not know that I had prima facie evidence of her feats of sexual endurance and gymnastic creativity.

Complicating the analysis of this revelation of systemic debauchery was the conventional wisdom of 21st Century "Philosopher Authoritarians." They incredibly believed that gods and goddesses of jurisprudence and the unisex automatons of academe "could do no wrong." Had they not redacted all core values?

"At worst, it's just an interlude of reckless mischief," Vernon asserted, demonstrating the perverse audacity to identify herself as a victim of my limitations.

Fortunately for her career, her bosses never learned of her crowning moment.

It happened at the spectacular annual picnic sponsored by her law firm. All of the senior partners of the firm had earned their degrees from the state university; therefore, the faculty joined in the annual celebration of Independence Day.

What happened? Details of the event lie deeply archived, but the implications have rampaged through the daily record of our existence incessantly.

Infidelity had long since been expunged from the lexicon of Vernon's 21st century cyber mentalities. Perhaps it was incidental that it was this Fourth of July picnic at which the beastly nature of Vernon's carefully crafted bacchanalia.

Parties had literally roared the night before the Fourth at several locations around the university and at all of the downtown hotels and exclusive clubs. I had attended my rather staid departmental affair, consumed my two beers, and gone home to bed before midnight. Interfering with my faculty member' personal morality prerogatives became a pleasure when alcohol, drugs or betraying the spouse is concerned. So, sue me!

For clarification, I must hasten to say that my history department always absorbed a degree of ridicule from other faculties for "having our clod hoppers stuck in the Victorian 19th Century." We couldn't be offended, for it was true. My credentials made me a de fact citizen of London in the period between 1725 and 1903.

My wife as usual considered partying with her "special friends and colleagues" nothing short of her manifest destiny. Her devotion and loyalty to the law firm and her lawyering compatriots at times manifested the force of fanaticism or perhaps obsession. If I valued my credentials as a man for all seasons, I would simply grin and bear it.

When she arrived home at 3 a.m. more than slightly inebriated, I arose from a troubled sleep prepared to drop the academic pretensions and "raise holy hell with her." Apparently alcoholically comatose, she undressed methodically and fell into bed without acknowledging my presence.

Vernon arose at 5 a.m. that holiday morning and drove alone to the Miller's Mill Park & Resort. She always served as the law firm's liaison with the party time venders, caterers and security firms. This was an important responsibility. With the authority to approve or reject the creativity of any event manager, Vernon served as the pivotal administrative figure in these festivities.

Not inconsequential, moreover, was the concomitant disbursement of the $100,000 budget the law firm authorized to insure the quality of this celebration.

All seemed to have come alive on time and in fine fettle when I followed her at 7 o'clock ready to invade the Inn's no less than a dozen meticulously managed gardens, each with a sumptuous breakfast buffet.

Several hundred invitees had already arrived. As I sipped my first coffee and scanned the guest list, I realized for the first time that the gross hip pocket wallet value of that cohort exceeded $10 billion.

These were clients whose names were found on foundations and trusts that conserved and managed the great fortunes. Many of the client class, however, were well known only through the exploitation media as destructive players and worse.

From a distance I watched as my wife covered the party's courts like an NBA guard. Her vital signs were registering as incredible exaggerations, all systems well off reality's charts of strength and energy.

Only two hours of drugged sleep had dispelled the comatose stare and wooden features. My wife also had bathed, skillfully applied her make up and changed from work slacks into a short minidress I had never seen.

Vernon and her all powerful clipboard were so overwhelmed with functionary demands that she could only wave deferentially from a distance and meld once more into the army of service personnel. This was not unexpected, and I attempted to avoid the demands of my rational mind.

Filling my plate, I began to seek familiar faces from my history department.

As I joined Grace, Arch and Reggie and their families, one of the law firm's venerable senior partners, mounted the bandstand. He exuded respectability.

With genuine respect for brevity, the genial white haired patron welcomed everyone and formally opened the day's festivities.

Before our respected benefactor concluded his review of the day's formal agenda, he paused to lend gravitas to a new feature. Women's concerns as defined by the organized women's body politic had attained critical mass; and the law firm's policy makers had bowed to unspecified pressures to make a substantial contribution.

Scrambled eggs with ham and toast please my raw nervous system, but I listened attentively and critically observed the multitude. Continuing as a gestalt, the image of Vernon arriving home at 3 a.m. in a drunken zombie trance colored all of my thoughts.

Behind the speaker stood a pole that seemed to rise 20 feet in the air. As the firm's spokesman called attention to the numbers on the large white sheets attached to the pole, I realized that the totem was calibrated to record a tote of $40 million.

My brain refused momentarily to process the information. Of course, the event was astounding; but I was a respected student of history who knew that such absurdities were well documented in history.

It wasn't history, however, that fueled my cognition. Not time to explain, but I was drawing from the account of Eve leaping out of heaven's door into chaos on the promise of experiencing Satan's 11-incher. From that metaphor we draw the conclusion that nothing rational in human existence is as it seems.

Illusions abound while solutions inflate and pop at the top of every hour.

On the bandstand, the senior partner began describing the details of the fund raising contest.

"We anticipate that we will have our goal subscribed well before the deadline of 6 p.m.," the senior partner said affably. "We already have $8,500,000 before the little ball starts rising up the red pole back there."

Polite applause swept across the plaza.

"That's a lotta money," a voice weary of partying slurred.

What are these issues? Who are these women you're giving $40 million?

Ignoring the questions for which he had no answers, the party sponsor raised his hand asking for silence. He cleared his throat nervously.

"As I have said," the spokesman reiterated, "we will have no problem raising the money."

But there was more. His next pronouncement electrified the crowed.

"To add a bit of drama and excitement and give a modicum of incentive," he intoned, now having regained the advantage, "we will hand the keys to that magnificent Mercedes-Benz S Class Coupe to the winner of a very simple contest."

To drive away in that beautiful red Mercedes Coupe, the winner must be the first guest or invitee to present a certified pledge list of donors that totals $10 million.

I watched as the crowd turned as one to gaze to their left across the plaza. Impressive! To say the least, the Patron had caught the attention of all present.

"What's the catch?" asked the same drunk who had demanded to know who was getting the proceeds of this financial extravaganza.

"All you need to do to participate," the senior partner continued unruffled, "is go to registration, show proof you are an invitee or otherwise a guest and get your badge identifying you as a contestant fundraiser."

Personally, the descendant of the law firm's exemplary founder pledged $750,000. Immediately, voice from the crowd made pledges.

"Remember the procedure," the patron cautioned. "All contributions must be veririfed at the registration desk with signed and notarized promissory notes."

Reminding the throng of the prize, he emphasized that the Mercedes represented a "negotiable instrument," the equivalent of $100,000. Their CPA's needed an enforceable commitment or money in the bank if they were to award the prize to the winner at 6 p.m. in a formal ceremony.

Off to the side of the podium had gathered an unruly, ugly swarm of guests. I was not surprised to see my wife among them. Many worked in her office. I counted seven men and five women who obviously had already renewed their buzz before 9 a.m.

My dominant emotion, while not surprise, brought me to an uncomfortable attention. Vernon stood staring at the red pole that would gauge the flow of the money. Her friends passed a bottle. Each drank deeply.

As I approached the hooting, coughing, cursing troupe, Vernon diverted her fitful gaze from the Mercedes to me. Incredulously, I studied her dissolute features.

"Hi! How do you like my new Mercedes?" she asked, obviously having difficulty focusing on my face.

"Come on!" I said having difficulty swallowing my anger. "I'll get you home."

"Who the hell do you think you are, Slim?" she bellowed, the sudden clarity and force of her voice freezing me in place.

"Vernon?" I said tentatively. "What's happening here?"

Now she was sober. Her eyes were narrowed and angry but she was no longer witless. Of course, I knew immediately. Anyone who has lived 20 minutes in the 21st Century knows the behavior patterns of various dopes as compared to alcohol.

Obscenities peppered her language as she accused me of spying on her. Episodic coma in variation with intense sobriety characterized her behavior. I knew that I would have difficulty in communicating with her. Desperately, I needed to gain control quickly and get her away from there.

It wasn't to be.

Man Mountain stepped in and seized her possessively around the waist. I had never met the man, and I doubted that he was part of Vernon's office gang. He was larger than life and more intimidating than a mad dog.

All was lost in my effort to get her to come with me when her crowd suddenly coalesced around her and her masterful friend. When a brunette who resembled Vernon left the huddle and accosted me, I realized the degree of Vernon's depravity.

"You're Vernon's hubby," she said. "I know you from the pictures on her desk."

"Help me get her home," I said evenly, knowing that my position was hopeless.

"She'll be all right," the woman said, leaning so close that I could verify that she had no evidence of alcohol on her breath. "You just run along and let her have her fun."

"She'll need money for more pot," I said, knowing they were well beyond Marijuana. It was a ploy on my part. Knowing what she was using would be important if I got her away from them.

"Let Bob pay," she said. "He got her to try the 'H' so let him come up with the gwop."

"She's shooting heroin!" I shouted. My envoy from the amoebic-like scrum stepped back as if I had hit her.

"Not so loud!" she hissed. "They'll throw our asses outa here if they now we're using."