The Videotape

When I returned from lunch it was lying with the rest of my mail in a pile on my desk. I get videotapes in the mail all the time—I'm the co-owner of a video editing and production firm—but this one caught my eye because it was hand-addressed personally to Mark Bernier, in block letters, with no return address.

I was bored with the editing job I was in the middle of. More to delay getting back to it than for any other reason, I opened the envelope. There was no note, and the tape was unlabeled. I slid the rolling chair across my office to the VCR and popped in the tape.

The tape was made by an amateur: it was a little grainy and underlit. I saw what looked like a bedroom, with an unoccupied king-size bed. After few moments a couple came in and began undressing one another. The man was a lean slick-looking guy of about 30. The woman I could only see from behind, but she had a beautiful, shapely body.

Within a minute or so, and without any romantic hugging or kissing, the couple was naked on the bed, engaged in serious foreplay. I wondered idly why some anonymous person would have gone to the trouble of sending me an amateur porno tape. Realizing that I might as well get back to work, I sighed and rolled over to the VCR to stop the tape.

As I did so I glanced back at the screen. The woman was now astride the man and moving up and down, his cock buried inside her. He was pulling her forward so that her lovely breasts hung down and brushed his lips. I could see her face clearly. The woman was Amy, my wife.

I lunged for the VCR and hit "Stop"; then I sat back in my chair, stunned. Without moving I pondered the total impossibility of what I had just seen.

Until that afternoon I considered myself the luckiest and most happily married man in Cincinnati, if not in the entire state of Ohio. I loved Amy with all my heart, and I knew she adored me. We had been married about 4½ years and I'd never had the slightest reason to suspect her of being unfaithful, or of being dissatisfied with me in any way.

I stared across the room for many minutes, seeing nothing, my mind a whirl of confused and painful thoughts. I had no idea what to do—I had no idea what this tape meant. Well, obviously I had SOME idea: my goddam wife was cheating on me! But the when and where, and above all the why, were a total mystery.

As my shock hardened into anger, I got to my feet and closed my office door. If nothing else, I needed to know more. I needed to see the whole tape.

*** *** ***

I spent the rest of the afternoon watching, then re-watching the tape with a professional eye, trying to put aside my horror and simply see what was there to be seen.

It was clearly an unedited original, made from a single camera (presumably hidden) in a bedroom somewhere. It showed two hours of Amy with the unknown man, in a variety of sex acts. For some reason the sound on the tape was badly distorted and I couldn't understand any of their words to one another.

After the first fuck, with Amy riding the man, they both rested for a few minutes. Then she sat up with her back to the bed's headboard, while he kneeled in front of him and she sucked him off, caressing his balls and holding the base of his cock so he wouldn't thrust too deeply into her mouth. I watched him spasm into her as he came, and I watched her swallow—something she had never done for me. After about twenty minutes of idle conversation, she sucked him to hardness again; then she got on her hands and knees, and he fucked her from behind for a few minutes.

Then, to my utter shock, he went to the night table, got out a bottle of lube, and lubed up his cock and her asshole. Without any word of protest from Amy, he then slowly worked his cock into her and fucked her anally for a long time, before throwing his head back and shouting as he came into her. Amy remained a passive participant the whole time, moving with him as he pumped her but showing no signs either of pleasure or protest.

After this third orgasm the man collapsed on the bed. Amy arose and disappeared from the picture, but a few moments later she returned with a washcloth and carefully cleaned off the man's cock. He seemed half-asleep; but when she finished cleaning him she took his cock in her mouth again and once more licked and sucked him to an erection. As he lay back smiling at her, she pumped him vigorously, this time apparently determined to bring him off again in her mouth. The tape ran out in the middle of this blow-job.

Grimly, thinking like a professional video editor and not a betrayed husband, I went through the tape again for any further clues that would help me understand why Amy could have done this.

I didn't learn much. The bedroom was spacious and fancy—clearly its owner had money. There was enough natural light coming in through the windows to show that the tape was made during the day.

The man was about 30, which would have made him 3 years or so older than Amy. He was attractive, I guess, but nothing special, and his cock was certainly no larger than mine.

The tape had to have been shot about 4-6 months earlier. When she first came into the room Amy was wearing a locket I'd given her for our fourth wedding anniversary, about six months ago. But her hair was longer in the video than I had seen it lately, and I remembered her cutting it shorter about four months ago.

The one thing that came through more and more clearly as I watched again was the contrast in their attitudes. The man was relaxed and enjoying himself. He was obviously very familiar with Amy, almost possessive—this was no first-time encounter. Yet Amy seemed merely dutiful. She cooperated with whatever the man seemed to want, and several times took the lead herself. But the smiles she gave him seemed forced, and whenever her face was turned away from his I saw a grim look, never an expression of pleasure or excitement. And her one or two possible orgasms looked faked, though I wasn't confident of that.

I was left with more questions than answers. Now, in addition to "how could my loving wife have cheated on me?" I had to wonder "why would Amy have spent more than two hours fucking and sucking a man she didn't seem at all excited by?" And, at least as bad as those, was "why did she blow him and let him cum in her mouth, and why did she have anal sex with him, when she would never do those things with me?"

*** *** ***

Amy and I had first met when I was 31 and she was only 20, a junior at the University of Cincinnati doing an internship in our office. We regularly offered jobs to interns interested in the video production business, and Amy was the best we had ever had. She was very bright, extremely responsible, and showed a lot of initiative.

From the first moment I saw her I was attracted to Amy—but I was also aware that I needed to maintain a totally professional relationship with her. She worked many hours by my side in the editing booth and I never touched her. We had a friendly, sometimes teasing, but completely appropriate relationship.

On the last day of her internship I was very tempted to ask her out, but I restrained myself. 31 and 20 didn't seem like such a good idea—and she wasn't even out of school yet.

But two years later I saw her again. Now graduated, she was applying for a position at the local CBS affiliate, and she stopped in to ask for an updated letter of recommendation. This time I didn't miss my chance, though I waited a couple of weeks until she landed the job. I invited her out to lunch, and we had a terrific time.

It wasn't until more than a year later, when we were engaged to be married, that I learned the last visit had been a set-up. During her internship Amy had been as interested in me as I was in her—she used the "updated letter of recommendation" as an excuse to drop in and see me again, and it worked.

I'd had my share of girlfriends, but never known a woman like Amy. Her energy and the joy she took in life made every moment around her a pleasure. She was not only beautiful, with sparkling eyes and a truly perfect figure, but charming and playful and intelligent. If it sounds like I was basically crazy about her, I was.

We advanced from lunch dates to dinners, then to overnights and weekends together. Making love to Amy was completely delightful, at least at first. I always wanted to please her with a lot of foreplay, slow and tender touching, and then intercourse that was relaxed and lingering. I've never been into all that hard pounding.

And it seemed that sexually as in every other way, Amy and I were a perfect match. She would lie back and enjoy my caresses, my hands and lips and tongue on her. Sometimes she'd let me bring her to two or three orgasms before I entered her; at other times she would get very aroused and say, "enough, Mark! get that beautiful thing inside me now!", and I'd be happy to oblige.

On other occasions Amy would take the lead, massaging and stroking me all over, then using her own mouth and hands to get me frantically excited. She never blew me to completion, but was happy to suck and lick my cock, as long as I kept my hips still and never forced it into her mouth.

In fact, I gradually realized that as wonderful as sex with Amy was, her range of preferences was rather narrow. She didn't seem to like anything too rough or forceful; she wouldn't let me come in her mouth; she liked a few basic positions, and didn't want to experiment with others; and she was clearly spooked by anything anal.

I gently broached the latter possibility once or twice by caressing her bottom while we were making love. But when my fingers strayed near her opening she stiffened and reached back to move them away. The second time I tried it she said, "sorry, honey—I'm just not comfortable with that, OK?"

Of course that was OK. I adored Amy, and if our sex life was a bit "vanilla" it was still loving and exciting—and frequent.

And there were so many other ways in which we complemented one another. We both preferred to stay home most nights, making dinners out or parties the exceptions. We each loved cooking, and shared a lot of pleasure in trying new recipes together. She liked to dry the dishes, while I preferred to wash.

I adored having a beautiful younger woman for a wife, someone whom I could teach things to, and be a protector for. And she loved feeling safe with me—she was a strong and independent woman, but she also liked being with someone a little older, who'd been out in the world longer. She teased me sometimes and called me "old man", but we both understood that it was a playful and loving expression.

We just both felt like we'd found the perfect match, the jigsaw piece that completed our own puzzle. I was a happy man.

*** *** ***

Until now. What I saw that afternoon on the videotape destroyed me. It sickened me. And it confused me.

I couldn't believe Amy would cheat on me—but she had. And I couldn't believe that my sweet wife, so conservative sexually, would happily let some other guy shoot off in her mouth, let alone fuck her energetically in the ass. But she had. She'd spent more than two hours getting this guy's rocks off. And if she hadn't seemed to enjoy it much, she'd certainly been an active and willing participant.

I didn't know if my marriage was over. I couldn't imagine being without Amy; but I couldn't imagine going back to her either. How could I make love with her, return to our gentle and loving way of pleasing each other, while seeing her rolling around with that bastard, giving him her ass, letting him cum in her mouth?

This had happened totally behind my back—I would have bet my house and my car on Amy's fidelity. How did I turn into that cliché, the cuckolded husband? How would I ever be able to trust her again?

Despite my long afternoon with that damned videotape, I got home before Amy. On Wednesdays she worked a late shift and didn't come home until after 7pm. Usually I would make dinner for us and have it ready when she arrived.

So she was surprised to see me just sitting at the kitchen table when she came in. There was nothing cooking, and the table wasn't set. In fact the lights weren't even on—I was sitting in semi-darkness as dusk fell outside.

Amy must have had a good day. Her eyes shone and her face showed her pleasure at seeing me. "Hi sweetie! How was your day? Are we going out to dinner tonight?" She said this last as she turned on the light and looked around the kitchen, failing to see any signs of food preparation.

Not waiting for my answer she plopped herself down in my lap and tried to give me a loving kiss. But I turned my face away, saying quietly, "Amy, why don't you sit down over there? We need to talk."

Amy's face turned serious, but not alarmed. She sat down, saying, "is something wrong, Mark?"

I looked at her silently for a long moment, contemplating what was about to happen. The end of our happiness—well, the end of hers. Mine had ended hours earlier.

No sense in prolonging the agony. I didn't feel any desire to torment her.

"Amy, how many other men have you fucked since we've been married?"

"What?!" She half-shouted, half-gasped it. She looked utterly shocked. Her face turned pale, and she just stared at me without moving.

"It's not a hard question—at least I hope it's not. I certainly hope that it's not so many that you've lost count." I couldn't resist the opportunity to be sarcastic. My anger was cool, almost intellectual. I knew I wasn't going to scream, or throw things.

She never took her eyes off my face. In a strained, quiet voice she said, "Mark, you know how much I love you. Why on earth are you accusing me of this?"

Aware that she'd replied to my question with another question, I didn't answer. Instead I just looked at her, tapping my fingers a couple of times on the videotape sitting in the middle of the table. I'd brought home a copy, after locking the original in a drawer at work.

Amy glanced at the tape, then looked back at me. Her look showed horror, but also surprise.

I said, "you didn't know you were being taped?"

She shook her head, looking down at the floor. There was a long silence.

Finally she said, "Mark, I am so sorry. Jesus, I – it happened only one time. I …. I know that's probably not much consolation."

More silence. Then: "it meant nothing. It was – it was just sex. I didn't even enjoy it."

She looked up at me. "If you saw a tape of it, you must have seen that. It was awful—I hated every minute of it."

Suddenly she was crying, sobbing. "I'm so sorry!" She got up and tried to come into my arms, but I moved away from her. I didn't want to touch her. My urge to comfort her, my desire to dry her tears and make everything better, was overshadowed by my rage and confusion. I stepped away to the other side of the kitchen, leaving her standing by the table, sobbing, her hands hanging by her sides. She looked so young, and so small.

She cried for a long time, and I couldn't bring myself to comfort her. Finally I got her the tissue box and a glass of water. She sat down, her crying gradually slowing to a trickle. She sighed, wiped her face, and drank some water.

Looking at me, wearily, she said again, "I'm so sorry, Mark."

Shuddering at my own cruelty but unable to hold back, I said, "how do you even know who and what I saw on that tape?"

Her head shot up and she glared at me, her face full of anger. Then, after a minute, that look gave way to one of resignation.

"Trust me, Mark, I know. It could only have been one afternoon, about four months ago. That's the only time I—the only time I've even touched another man since we started dating."

She said this quietly, but in a way that, as angry as I was, made me believe her. For one thing, if there HAD been other times, how could she be so confident of what was on the tape?

More silence. Suddenly I didn't know what to do or say. I felt adrift—terribly hurt, but also totally baffled.

"Tell me about it," I said. "Tell me everything. Who, when, and above all why."

Her weary face now showed something else. Just sorrow, perhaps, or a fear that hadn't been there before.

Imploringly, she looked at me, stretching out her hand across the table towards mine, which remained just out of her reach.

"None of that matters, Mark. I love you—more than I thought I could ever love anyone—and I know you know that. Please, just think of this as a mistake. A horrible, ugly, disgusting mistake. One that I'll spend the rest of my life making up to you for, if you'll let me."

I stared at her in disbelief. "That's it? 'It was a mistake'? I'm supposed to say, 'OK, in that case let's forget about it'? Are you out of your mind?

"Amy, in case it slipped your mind, we vowed to forsake all others. That meant, 'not climb on a bed with some other guy and fuck his brains out for two hours'. You expect me just to accept your apology, without even knowing why the hell this happened?"

My voice was rising, and I tried to control my anger. "How am I supposed to be sure this 'mistake' won't happen again, with this guy or some other guy? Jesus, Amy—how can I possibly trust you after this?

"No, sorry, but you're going to have to explain this. I'm not going to like it, but I have to hear it. You don't have to spell out the details—I had the pleasure of seeing all of those—but you have to tell me WHY you fucked some other man!"

She was crying again, quietly, and shaking her head. "Mark, I can't. I just can't. Can't you just trust me enough to believe me, when I say that nothing like this will ever happen again?"

I laughed at her, angrily. "Trust you? You've got to be kidding, right? This is hardly the time to be asking me to trust you!

" For one thing, it was obviously not your first time with that asshole. Yet here you are swearing you did it only once!"

She looked at me bleakly. "I … knew him from before, Mark. From California, before I met you."

That made a certain amount of sense—at least, it seemed possible. "What's his name?"

Unwillingly, she said, "Andy Darnton."

"And just what the hell were you doing fucking Mr. Andy Darnton up one wall and down the other? Is this because I'm older? Because I'm almost 40? Have I stopped being able to satisfy you in bed lately, and you figured you needed another taste of a younger guy?"

Amy had been calm, almost resigned, for a few minutes. But now she started sobbing again, her shoulders shaking almost uncontrollably. I could barely understand her words.

"Please, Mark, please! It's nothing like that—you know I love the way you make love to me! I'm so sorry! I never meant to hurt you—and I swear I will never do this again as long as I live. Please, please don't make me talk about it!"

I just sat and stared at her as she wept. I had never experienced such a mixture of love, rage, sympathy, and utter bafflement. How could Amy possibly think I would let this go? It made no sense. She owed me an explanation—hell, she owed me a lot more than that! But it had to start with an explanation.

For the next ten minutes we went back and forth, getting nowhere. I tried being low-key and reasonable, but before long I was shouting, and she cowered away from me. With a curse, I got up and headed for the bedroom, leaving her crying at the kitchen table.

A few minutes later I was back in the kitchen, holding two suitcases I'd quickly packed.

"Amy, I don't know if our marriage can survive this. You know how much I love you, but you've hurt me more than you seem to understand.

"About the only thing I'm sure of is that if you won't tell me how and why this happened—how and why you fucked someone else—our marriage is over.

"You can reach me on my cell, or at work."

I headed for the door. Behind me Amy howled in despair, begging me to stay, but I didn't look back. I heard her feet running towards me, but before she could reach me I pulled the door shut behind me.