It was time to cut bait. I would have to tell the children. I went to an attorney named Martin Robinson. He advised me to go ahead and file, even if we decided to do counseling. He also advised me not to tell the children until Marie's service was imminent, like the night before. Robinson's office called me Monday morning and told me Marie would be served in her office, Tuesday morning. I took the day off and met Aubrey for lunch at a café near his campus.
His first question was, "Dad, is everything all right?"
I said, "No, son, it isn't. I recently found out that your mother had been unfaithful, including prostituting herself, and starring in porn movies. She'll be served early tomorrow."
He responded, "Ohmigod, Dad. You're sure that she did all this?"
I explained, "I talked to her about it, and at least, she didn't deny it."
He was flabbergasted, "My mom did all that?"
I replied, "There is no doubt. I couldn't believe it at first, either. I thought I had a wonderful marriage. I guess I did for over twenty years, but it's over now. Plain and simple. I don't see anyway I could do anything else but divorce her."
He commented, "No reconciliation is possible?"
I said, "If she hadn't been repeatedly doing these things for months, there might have been a chance. It's almost like I never knew who she was, or else she underwent some big changes that I was completely unaware of."
He said, "Maybe it was both. I'm so sorry, Dad."
I said, "I'm sorry, too. I don't know if she'll try to sugarcoat it when you talk to her, but I wanted you to know what I think are the facts."
He said, "I can't believe my mom is a porn star. Have you told the others?"
I answered, "I plan to do that when they get home for school this afternoon. I'm thinking that we should all meet Tuesday evening and you can hear what she has to say."
He replied, "I'll be there. This is hard to take in."
I ended with, "It is hard. I love you. I think she loves you. I know this is really difficult but if the five of us stick together, we can make it through this."
He responded, "I love you, too, Dad. Keep in touch!"
We shook hands and he headed off to his first afternoon class.
I waited at home for my other three children to return from school.
When Charlotte and Paula got home, Charlotte immediately recognized something was wrong.
She asked, "What's going on, Dad? You look like it's something serious."
I replied, "It is serious. I came home to discuss it with you guys and Ernie. Is it all right if we wait for Ernie?"
Both girls agreed.
It was only five or ten minutes until Ernie arrived.
Ernie inquired, "Is this a family council? Has something happened?"
I responded, "Sit down, and I'll give you my side of the story."
He joined us at the dining table. Now I had six eyes staring at me with concern.
I began, "I found out recently that your mother has not only unfaithful, but she has prostituted herself and is also becoming a star in dirty movies."
Ernie exclaimed, "Mom a porn star! No way!"
I said, "Unfortunately, it's true. When I confronted you mother, she at least had the character to not deny the facts. She's being served with divorce papers tomorrow."
Charlotte asked, "How long has this been going on?"
I replied, "I don't know exactly when all this started, but I am sure it has been going on for months, maybe longer."
Paula inquired, "And she was just going about the house, being our mom, while all this was going on?"
I responded, "I'm afraid so. I don't know how I failed to pick up the signs. I think it was just that I loved her and trusted her, and I guess, was just plain oblivious."
Ernie commented, "Just like the rest of us."
Paula continued, "And there's no doubt about any of this?"
I admitted, "I have been gathering evidence in case she changes her response, but so far she hasn't denied any of it."
Charlotte added, "Incredible. Our mom. I believe you, Dad, but it's just hard to accept."
I explained, "I'm planning on taking you guys out tonight. I don't want you to lie to her, but I'd prefer you didn't discuss it with her until after she's served tomorrow while she's at work. We will have an all hands meeting tomorrow night."
Tuesday around ten-thirty, Marie called me, "What have you done? Why did you do this? I thought we were still talking and were going to do counseling? What the fuck?"
I replied, "We can still do counseling, but my attorney advised me that this is the appropriate next step for me. The counseling is not guaranteed to resolve all of our problems."
She asked, "Have you told the children?"
I responded, "I told all four children yesterday."
She inquired, "That's why you kept them out late last night. You didn't want me to have any warning about this happening today?"
I answered, "Yes, but I'm trying to make it easy for them."
She continued, "But not for me?"
I explained, "I think you brought this on yourself."
She began crying, "I did, but I still love you. I'm still hoping we can get back together, and things can be like they used to be."
I spoke slowly and carefully, "That would be nice, but without fidelity or trust, it's going to be hard. I told the children we could all meet at dinner tonight. Aubrey will be there."
Our supper that evening was mostly silent. It seemed that everyone was deep in their own thoughts. After dinner was cleared away, we sat back down around the dinner table.
I opened, "I've talked about this with all of you. The four of you haven't heard anything from your mother, so I think she should speak first."
She began, "I don't know how much you know about this, but I'm going to give you my side of the story. I don't know which hurt the most, finding out that your father had discovered my career as a porn star a few days ago, or being served with the divorce documents at work today. It's not that I deserved any better, but it still hurt, perhaps more because I know it was all my doing. I'm so sorry that I have hurt each of you and disappointed you with my shameful conduct. I have resigned my job at Massimo, so I won't be doing the awful things I was doing any more. I'll probably take a few days off to try to forgive myself for my dark deeds, and then I'll start looking for a new job. I still hope that through counseling your father and I can get back what I so wantonly destroyed. I still love each and every one of you with all my heart, and I just hope there can be some forgiveness for all my misdeeds. I feel terrible for my stupidity and weakness and lack of moral standards. It may take a while, but I hope that, with time, you can think of me as a good mother and not as a wanton slut. I begged your father not to kick me to the side, and I hope that you guys will not turn away from me. Again, I'm so sorry for my bad behavior. I know it's asking a lot, but I love you, and I hope you can forgive me."
Aubrey responded first, "Mom, as far as I know, you've never been anything but a loving mother. This just seems so atypical. Why? What happened?"
She said, "First, this afternoon, I handed in my resignation at Massimo. They weren't happy, but I told them that my career had diverged from what it was when I started to the point of conflict with my being a good mother. Second, my job didn't morph from being an ordinary job to being a porn star didn't happen in one giant step. It was a long series of small steps. I don't think there is any way you can begin to understand what I did without knowing the small steps. Painful as it will be, I'm willing to tell you the long, sad story. First, I am a sensual woman. Women are different from men in that they are subject to the vagaries of the feminine cycle. It is about four weeks, and I'm sure all of you know that menses happens about every four weeks. Also, usually halfway between each menses is ovulation. One of the effects of this is that a woman's desire for breeding reaches a peak at ovulation. I am telling you this because I think that may have contributed to some of my bad decisions. So, when did this all start. I think it happened around four months ago when my boss asked me if I had any interest in modeling. I had thought about it, although not seriously when I was in my teens and early twenties, but I never did anything. I was amazed and excited about this second chance to fulfill a teenage fantasy. At first, I was just doing dresses, slacks, skirts, jackets, and other outer garments. Some of the dresses were quite exciting and attractive, even though I couldn't see myself wearing them ordinarily. Then they asked me to do swimsuits, and eventually lingerie, some of which were quite revealing, even more so than the bikinis I had been doing. It seemed a small step to do nude modeling. You might not know but I sketched nudes in my life drawing classes in college. It didn't seem like that big a deal. From there we moved into nude modeling with guys, even though it was still artistic. Gradually, that evolved into erotic modeling. The first red line I crossed was getting so aroused in a nude modeling shoot with a male model that I let him do me. I was so aroused that I also let the photographer do me. To me and I think, to your father, the red line was not what I did, although that was bad enough, but I didn't tell him what had happened and I didn't stop my jaunt down the primrose path. I thought about it and decided he would be happier not knowing. I guess I was happier with him not knowing. After that, most of my modeling sessions climaxed with sex. I didn't realize it but these sessions not only had lots of photos, but also video. Initially, I wasn't aware that the video was being distributed to a select few clients at high, for most people, prohibitive prices. My employer gave me a piece of the action which I put in a separate account to keep it hidden from your father. I guess that was another violation of trust. At this point, I was all in for more and more exotic videos, I even posed for the dust cover pictures. What finally tipped your father off to my misbehavior was seeing one of the dust covers. It is unlikely but certainly possible that one or more of these videos will surface to my embarrassment and yours, as well. The more and more exotic sex was like a drug. The more deeply I got involved, the more I wanted to do even more outrageous things. It was like I had two personalities, a happily married wife and mother and total slut whore. The slut whore is over, but I really have no way of making amends for what I have done. As your father pointed out, this was anything but a one-off, I did it for months. I'm glad that the living a lie part is over. I just hope that I haven't completely destroyed my relationships with the five of you. I'm totally ashamed of what I have done and can't tell you how sorry I am. I can completely understand if all of you turn your backs on me and never want to see me again. I love each and every one of you and sincerely hope that we can still have some sort of relationship going forward even if it's not possible to be the same as it was."
She put her head on her hands and started sobbing. I had an impulse to hug her but the best I could do is give her a few soft pats on her back.
Charlotte came and hugged her, "We'll try to work things out, Mom."
Paula put her hand on her shoulder and said, "Hang in there, Mom."
Aubrey said, "I still don't understand why you never came to the point of at least hinting to Dad that something was going on?"
Marie raised her head, tears still running down her cheeks, "I was enjoying what I was doing and I was telling myself that if Johnny didn't know, it wouldn't hurt him. I'd like to think I was something special, but I guess the bottom line is that I was just another serial cheater. I believe I can be a different person than that, much more like the woman your Dad loved for over twenty years, even if I am not one hundred percent sure I can do it. I think I am a long way from convincing your Dad. Maybe the same thing is true for you guys."
Aubrey replied, "I think you have to convince yourself before we can be expected to believe in you."
Charlotte said, "I believe you can do it, mom!"
Paula asked, "What if our friends see some of your videos, Mom?"
Marie continued crying, as she responded, "I don't know, Paula. I had convinced myself that it was extremely unlikely, but it is a possibility. I should have thought of that at some point before now and said no to doing any more. I guess all you can do is say 'that is the despicable woman that's my mother, but it's not me!'"
Paula responded, "Let's all hope that it doesn't happen."
Ernie said, "Are you still going to be my mother?"
Marie answered, "I hope so. It depends partly on your dad, and likely, partly on the divorce court. I know that I'm willing to devote even more time and effort to my family than I ever have before."
That was pretty much the end of our meeting. Marie went to the master bedroom, and I went to the living room. I think the children had their own post-meeting meeting. Thirty or forty minutes later, Aubrey said goodnight to me and headed back to school.
As the days went by I was feeling less anger toward Marie. The sad fact was that I was feeling less of everything for Marie. I didn't like the way she had treated me. In my mind, she was forever a scarlet woman. No letter on her forehead, but from my point of view there might as well have been. I thought about trying to acquire one of her videos. The picture of her sandwiched between two big black studs was forever etched in my memory.
I wondered if the adult video store that I had noticed in a run-down strip center on my way home from work might have a copy, for less than a thousand dollars. I went there and looked through their used videos. Sure enough, there she was, smiling with her arms bound above her head and only a thin thong between her and complete nudity. The price was forty dollars. Very expensive for a used DVD, but a hell of a lot less exclusive than the thousand dollar price tag Marie had suggested. Actually, I convinced myself that I was only buying it so that none of my children's friends or acquaintances could acquire it. With that motivation, I visited two other adult video stores that were not very far removed from my usual routes to and from work. I scored another of Marie's videos for forty-five dollars. It was the one of Marie nude but sandwiched between the two black studs. One of their legs obscured her naughty bits although both boobs were on full display. I kept them for a few days before I viewed them.
Meanwhile, my divorce proceeding proceeded. So far, the only disagreement seemed to be over the number of counseling sessions to be undergone. Surprisingly Marie didn't fight giving me primary custody, although she wanted liberal visitation. Frankly, where Marie was concerned I just felt numb. She had moved to an apartment. I had split our investment and checking accounts with her, so she was living off her capital, while she looked for a new job. So far she was getting a few free lance commissions, but that was all. Not enough to keep body and soul together for the long-term.
Our counselor was very good. I thought that at least some of the twelve sessions we had agreed on would be helpful. Mrs. Lane wasn't trying to ram us back into our marriage. Our sessions seemed to be progressing nicely in helping us both deal with our loss of confidence and self-esteem resulting from Marie's betrayal of me and our relationship and its aftermath. She seemed to be taking the approach that the first objective would be to try to heal our wounds or at least guide us toward healing our own wounds, and once we were healed, we would concentrate on discovering if there was enough left of our relationship for a second try.
I was fully on board, but Marie would have preferred to directly approach the issue of reconciliation. It was both strange and interesting to feel like I was helping Marie recover from her torpedoing of our marital relationship. I think she did feel good about assisting me in my recovery. She seemed to feel as warmly about me as she ever had. Unfortunately, I was looking at her videos. It was a strange experience watching them. I was both aroused and disgusted when I watched them. I went to six more video stores and purchased five more of her DVD's, two were new to me and three were duplicates. The five cost less than two-hundred dollars, tax included. The two that I hadn't seen before, convinced me that she was depraved beyond recovery, and that I wanted no part of her, even though I did become thoroughly aroused when watching them.
The first three months of our separation she was very conscientious about seeing the children and seemed to be seeking contact with me whenever possible. As the final decree for our divorce approached she seemed to be less anxious to see me. That was probably because the reconciliation part of our counseling didn't seem to progress beyond my loss of confidence in her fidelity and trustworthiness.
The counseling seemed to help both of us feel better about ourselves, and after eight weeks on self-improvement, the final sessions of our counseling were about dealing cooperatively where the children were concerned and looking at the issues that were keeping us from reconciliation. We were both fully on board with a civil cooperation where the children were concerned, but it seemed that reconciliation was just not possible at the current time. My attitude could probably be summed up as 'once burned; once learned.'
After the divorce, Marie seemed to be less conscientious about seeing the children, after the divorce decree had given me primary custody. Marie seemed to not desire custody or visitation privileges anywhere near as much as she desired reconciliation with me. Soon, she was effectively seeing the children an average of one weekend a month. She now seemed to be avoiding contact with me whenever possible.
A few months later, one of my long-time neighbors gave me a DVD that his wife had picked up at a garage sale. It starred the timeless star of erotic videos, Jaja Monroe, in "Jaja can't get enough of her big boys." Although she was thinner, it was clearly Marie. I watched it and it was even more degenerate than her previous videos. The plot was simple. Everywhere she went, she would pick up a couple of stallions, white, black, or in between, and take them home with her. The theme changed to BDSM with the stallions taking her to a mansion with a fully equipped BDSM room where the two guys and the owner treated her to most of the experiences available in the room. The most significant thing about this DVD was that it was apparently available new for $29.99. I guess Marie was no longer a high-priced whore.
Although it had been several months since the children had seen her, the children wanted to invite her to our family Christmas get-together. Although she hadn't been invited to Aubrey's wedding, he and his wife greeted her as a mother and mother-in-law. My significant other, Janie, was able to hug her and treat her a little more than civilly. Her grandson by way of Aubrey enjoyed sitting in her lap and was enthralled with the abundant, multi-color tattoos on her arms.
The low point of her day occurred when I asked her if she had returned to her old job at Massimo. A tear ran down her face as she admitted that she had. Both of us were willing then to move on to other topics.
Marie
In spite of my unconventional lifestyle, I was heartened when Johnny invited me to spend Christmas day with what had been my family. I fell in love with Aubrey, Jr., who couldn't seem to get enough of the tattoos that were visible on my arms. He couldn't see most of my tattooed area because it was covered by my reasonably modest clothing. By now I have become the tattooed lady of porn. Johnny asked me if I had returned to work at Massimo. I admitted that I had, even though I knew that guaranteed that Johnny and I had no future. I enjoyed being the in-house whore of Massimo, almost as much as I enjoyed being a porn star. If I had my choice I would forego the fleshly pleasures of my current life and be the nice grandmother wife of Johnny. It's a choice not available so I'll just go on being a slut and porn star at Massimo as long as they'll have me. I am making money hand over fist, so I will have a pleasant retirement, perhaps on a tropical beach somewhere. Perhaps some of my fortune will go to gigolos when my looks are gone, but that is the best life I can have, so I will live it.