“You coming with us tonight or not?” the man asked his friend.
One of the men was seated at the bar with a drink. The other was just walking in. I was having dinner with someone at a table close enough to the bar to see and hear most of what was going on.
“Christie said I’ve got to watch a [expletive] movie with her and the kids,” the man who just walked in said.
“Just make up some [expletive],” the first name said. “You don’t want to get stuck with that. I got some girls coming who Christie don’t need to know about, but they’ll be way more fun.”
I couldn’t hear well enough to get the details, but the basics were clear. A small group of male friends were going somewhere tonight without their wives — they were all married — and the trip secretly involved getting drunk and having sex with other women. And one of the men had been “pussy-whipped” — their term — into staying home with his children instead.
We’re neither friends nor enemies, just strangers who share the past
‘This path leads to somewhere I think I can finally say, I’m home’
When love finally dies, it’s like a fever breaks and the pain is gone
Society needs storytellers to help make sense of a changing world
My bad teen poetry suggests I’ve always hungered for missing love