by Falls, K. C.
I was cool with that. I never enjoyed school very much anyway and I knew I'd get all the practical education I needed in my daddy's shop. I used to go there after school every day as soon as I was able to do anything useful. When I was fourteen or fifteen I helped with anything and everything. Gradually I learned the entire business by osmosis. Dad hardly had to teach me, I just sucked it all up.
No other kid I knew learned to drive in a limo. I wasn't supposed to, technically, because you have to be nineteen to get a license to drive a limousine, but we bent the law a little so that I could hit the ground running when I reached my nineteenth birthday. I took my actual test in Aunt Terri's big Lincoln. It was the biggest car I could rustle up. I needed the 'land yacht' to feel comfortable.
Although I worked in the office quite a bit, my dad wasn't so old fashioned that he couldn't recognize the value of a pretty filly showing up for an executive trip to the airport. Dad always chose my clients carefully and made sure they knew they were special. I drove plenty of executives to the airports and pretty soon I had them asking for me by name.
I was usually spared the proms and most weddings, thank God. At least once during prom season some kid would barf in the back of one of our beautiful cars. Do you have any idea how hard it is make that stench go away? And, since it is the driver's responsibility to return the car the way he or she found it . . . you get the picture.
My dad set a great example and I'll always love him for it. His little empire ran with precision. I learned how important it is to get it right the first time. So much of our business is repeat business that one fuck-up can mean lost bookings for many years. Dad also instilled values in me that I guess could be considered 'from the old country' but I appreciated it. By the time I was twenty-five I had more business sense than some people twice my age. I knew how to keep the books, manage the schedules and figure out exactly which gig put us in the black every month. I didn't know much about the maintenance end, but I knew how to find people who did and manage them well.
So, even though I wasn't at all prepared for my father's sudden death, I was prepared to step into his role in the business. It was such a traumatic time for my family. Sal had lost his tech job and Dad had put him to work in the company. It changed the dynamic of our marriage to spend so much time around each other. After my father died, I technically became Sal's boss. And that changed us even more.
I worked long, long hours trying to keep the clients we had and find new ones. My father had accounts that went back decades and I had to make sure that we delivered the same quality service that kept that loyal clientele. My brothers were scattered everywhere but where I needed them to be. My mother retreated into a half-life—depressed and withdrawn. I resented all of them for letting everything fall on my shoulders. It was all about Trina.
My friendship with Rose was such a rock after Dad passed. She hadn't married and there had been plenty of boyfriends and plenty of tales to tell over the years. I envied her and she envied me but not in a negative kind of way.
She had all the freedom a person could want. She had a job she could walk away from, a kick-ass social schedule and the occasional lonely period when she'd wonder if she'd ever have a 'real life'.
I had real life in spades. I had almost more responsibility than I could handle. I had a nearly 24/7 relationship with Sal and wondered what it would be like to just be by myself for a bit. Isn't it funny how we always wish for what we can't seem to get?
"Honestly, Rose," I told her a couple months after the funeral, "I can't remember the last time I spent more than an hour just doing nothing by myself. If I'm not working, I'm taking care of Mama or my own house."
"Poor baby. I wish there was more I could do to help you. Can't Sal take over for a couple and let us sneak off for a girl's weekend? We could go to Atlantic City and gamble our fortunes away."
"Like either of us has any fortune to gamble away, sweetheart. And no, Sal can't take over for a couple of days."
"Well, can't he babysit your mom or give you a night off just to chill?" Rose wrinkled her cute round nose in a pout. She never said so, but I suspected she didn't like my husband too much. She was way too sweet to say so, though.
"Sal's not good with Mama. He doesn't have anything to say to her."
"Surely he can manage on his own for an evening."
"He's not real good at taking care of things on his own."
"Tell me, Trina, what is it exactly that your husband does other than drive your rides?" Rose rarely lost patience, but I could tell the discussion was wearing on her good nature.
My friend hit very close to a truth I wasn't thrilled to cop to, even to myself. But that's about all Sal did—drive. I was finding out that he wasn't exactly ambitious. In fact, I had to admit in my heart of hearts that he was basically lazy. He made no attempt to learn the business, even after my father died and it was plenty obvious I was doing the work of two people. Sal was perfectly content to drive around all day making small talk with the clients. He was very good at small talk.
He was also a flirt. One of our long time female customers called one day and told me that Sal had made a pass at her the night before.
"I hate to have to tell you this, Trina, but that driver I had last night . . . well, his behavior was totally out of line."
I flipped through the docket and saw it was Sal who drove her downtown from the airport. There were a lot of things that buzzed through my head but I had to keep calm and stay in my role as 'the boss'.
"I'm terribly sorry to hear that, Mrs. Jacobs. What was the nature of his behavior?" As if I didn't know. I'd seen Sal in action when he didn't think I was watching.
"Well, he started out being much more familiar than I was comfortable with," she began. 'Familiar' what an inoffensive word. Except that it isn't. "I tried to ignore it, but he kept complimenting me—inappropriately."
Wow, the woman had a great talent for dancing around the details. "Can you tell me what he said?" I asked and hoped fervently that she wouldn't.
"Just sort of . . . you know, comments about my looks—my legs, my hair, that kind of thing."
Oh. Dear. God. "Anything else?" I wanted to crawl under something really badly.
"He suggested that we have a drink at my hotel when he dropped me off. I don't mean to make something out of nothing, but he clearly had more than that on his mind. I just don't think it was very professional."
I could picture it. I could picture Sal's quite unsubtle come on. It hadn't been that long since he had used it on me, the dickhead.
She didn't know he was my husband and I certainly didn't tell her. I apologized profusely, embarrassed that I had to assure her I would suspend the employee and 'take appropriate action'. The only action I took was to make a note never to have Sal drive her again. I was lucky she didn’t sue us. I began to pay more attention to my husband’s assignments. I couldn’t afford to lose clients and I certainly couldn’t afford a lawsuit. If Sal noticed he wasn't getting any single females from that point on he never mentioned it.
I could have confronted him, but sweet Jesus I was so tired and stressed by the growing business that I just swept it all under the rug. There was more than one night that first year after Dad died that my husband came home reeking of booze and cheap perfume. I simply couldn't summon up the energy to fight about it.
Our sex life, never fantastic, suffered as well. I never refused my husband. I realized early on that he was not a creative lover but I always maintained that it was part of marriage to do my best between the sheets. Unfortunately, Sal didn't seem to share that idea. Time and time again I tried to encourage him to go down on me, thinking that oral sex would at least get me off and charge me up. He made a half-assed attempt at it once in a blue moon, but I could tell he wasn't into it. When he wanted a blowjob it was a different story.
The biggest problem, other than his lack of fucking finesse was his little dick. I'm sure he could have made up for it with style points but he didn't try.
<
br /> Sal became a master of the occasional quickie. He almost dispensed with the preliminaries altogether. It didn't seem to occur to him that it wasn't normal for a young woman like me to need so much lube. He was in, out and asleep in a matter of a couple of minutes.
I was taking care of Mom, holding down the business and doing all the marketing. My favorite days were the ones where I could go to conventions or trade shows and strut my stuff. It was the only time that I felt really good about myself. I was a woman in a macho world at those events and I sucked up the attention of my male colleagues like the dry sponge that I had become.
***
One night about a year after Dad died, Sal and I were both out on assignment. My male client had asked me to take him to a very seedy part of the city where the hookers, druggies, and drag queens walked the streets. I wasn't thrilled taking the limo into that sleazy neighborhood, but hell, business is business.
I dropped the guy on the corner and looked around for a parking lot where I could turn the limo around. I spied a nearly empty lot and pulled the limo in. In the back of the lot, tucked way back into the shadows was the limo Sal had been assigned to that night. I could see the distinctive hood ornament in the one beam of light that shone down on the front of the car.
I parked the limo in front of one of the building adjacent to the lot. I hated leaving the vehicle unattended, but I had to see what the hell was going on back there. I went down the breezeway between two buildings and came to the alley behind the parking lot. I approached the car from behind and noticed that the back window was halfway down. So I looked inside.
Fucking hell! I saw Sal's head bobbing up and down like a piston working a huge black cock with his mouth. The man's penis glistened with Sal's saliva as Sal pumped it with his hand while he sucked. The black dude was dressed in some sort of white satin dress and had red fishnet thigh-highs on. He/She was wearing a white blond wig that was half off and was moaning in a whiny high pitched falsetto.
I couldn't tear my eyes away, much as I wanted to. Suddenly I saw the guy reach down and pull Sal's face further down onto his massive erection. Then he thrust up with his hips, reared back his head against my leather seats and heaved a huge grunt. The motion knocked Sal's head back too and he lost the guy's cock just as he began spurting long jets of semen at my husband's face.
I'd never seen anything like this. Never. Sal and I had watched a porn flick here or there but it was always strictly one on one sex between a male and a female. And they were always white. This guy's cock was incredible. Sal's little dick was a pencil compared to it. I was mesmerized by the color of that shiny trunk of his--all purple/black in the pale light. The head looked to be the size of my fist.
It's very hard to explain being disgusted and turned on at the same time. I mean, this was my husband mouth on this very strange stranger's dick. I was insulted to the core of my femininity. But part of me watched in morbid fascination as a huge volume of jizz burst out of him onto my husband's face. Part of me wanted to witness my husband being far more carnal and way more perverse than he had ever been with me.
And yet there was a portion of my mind that was grateful. I finally knew why our sex life was so not sexy and that it wasn’t my fault. I have many great qualities but a big black cock isn’t one of them. What Sal was getting in the backseat of that car was way, way out of my league in every dimension.
I walked back to my vehicle on shaky legs. I hadn't been seen and I didn't know what to do next. Over the following few weeks I just stewed on it. I kept my distance from my husband and, frankly, he didn't seem to notice.
I couldn't discuss this with anyone—not even my bestie. Can you imagine how that conversation would go?
"Uh, Rose, what would you do if you caught Matt sucking a drag queen’s dick?" Sure, that happens all the time.
It was too appalling; too bizarre. Then one time too many he came home reeking of booze and some cheap perfume. I knew it was to disguise the man-musk all over him and I made a decision.
I didn't have to live with the shame. And I certainly didn't deserve to waste my youth and my beauty on a man who was hung like a chipmunk and batted for the other team.
Chapter Three
I walked down the steps of the courthouse, clutching the rail and gathering my wits. I felt almost faint that the relief and the stress of the past few months were behind me. Divorce is hard under any circumstances. When your husband cheats on you with other men, especially drag queens, it's humiliating in the extreme. My poor father would have died all over again if he knew what his precious 'Sally-like-a-son-to-me' had done. Sally was a pretty appropriate moniker for the son-of-a-bitch, come to think of it.
"I’m leaving you," I told him one day. Just matter-of-factly blurted it out over coffee one morning.
He looked at me like I had announced that I was joining the Peace Corps and moving to Burkina Faso. It wasn’t registering.
"I mean it, Sal. A d-i-v-o-r-c-e. I want out."
When it sunk in he responded with uncharacteristic passion. "What the fuck you talking about? Where’d this come from?"
"I know. I know all about everything."
"There's nothing to know. You getting your panties in a wad over my little flirtations? Is this about Loretta and Gino's party?" Oh yeah. The previous weekend he'd put on quite a little show with our hostess in the kitchen.
"No, Sal. If it was just you flirting with other women, I think I'd be able to live with it. Matter of fact, I have lived with it for quite a while."
"I haven't ever done anything with any other girl. You know that, baby." I winced at the baby and wanted to smack the 'I'm so innocent' smile right off his face.
"Yes, I know you haven't done anything with another woman. That's all just an act, isn't it? Is it meant to fool me, yourself or everybody else?"
"You lost me," he said dismissively. "You're not making any sense."
"Do you really want me to go into it, Sally? Are you sure you want to hear my reasons? ‘Cause I think if you take a good look at yourself, you’ll have all the answers you need."
"I have no idea what you’re talking about." He lied through his perfect teeth but I could see the panic flicker through his still gorgeous eyes. It struck me that I should have paid a shitload more attention to how pretty my husband really was.
"I know about the guys, Sal."
"You don’t know shit."
I rose and grabbed my purse. I wasn't going to stand there and waste time fighting a losing battle. It was over times five. "I know it and you know it. Now, I’m going to work and you’re not. When I get back, I want you gone."
"You bitch! You can’t do that to me!"
"I am doing it, sweet cheeks. And unless you want something real messy to happen, real fast I suggest you do exactly what you’re told."
"You can’t . . ."
"Oh. Yes. I. Can. You’re going to need to find another job. And if I know you, it’s gonna take every friend and every debt you can call in to get one. How quickly do you think your paisans are going to desert you when they find out you’re walkin’ a little light in those expensive loafers of yours?"
"Fuck you."
"You never did that too well either." It was nice to see him flinch a little when I said that. "I left you enough in our bank account so you won’t starve or have to turn tricks in those alleys you love so much. Other than that, you’re on your own."
"Where the hell am I supposed to go?"
"Away from me," I answered. I could feel him staring at my back as I left. There wasn’t anything more to say.
I was ever so thankful that New York had stepped into the 21st century and instituted a no-fault divorce option. I don't think I could have taken it if I was forced to air the sordid circumstances with Sal in front of a judge, or worse, a jury.
Of course, there wouldn’t have been any alimony because Sal no longer had a job. The company was mine and I was thankful that the judge didn't question the ‘mutually agreed upon terms’ o
f the property division—what little there was in terms of personal possessions. I would have fought that tooth and nail.
In my head, I was being generous with the rat bastard. The business kept us afloat but we were hardly rich. We’d just moved into a bigger, better townhouse and the first, last and security nearly broke the bank. In hindsight, I was lucky I hadn’t caved into Sal’s whine about buying a house. That could’ve been a nightmare.
I ditched our rental as quickly as I could. Who wants to live in a place filled with creepy ghosts of husbands past? If I’d been a more religious person, I’d have been hailing Mary several times a day for never letting me get pregnant. We never got tested, but we never used any birth control, either. So one or both of us were probably shooting blanks. Hell yeah.
By the time I unlocked the front door to the home I once again shared with my mother I felt lighter than I had in many months. I no longer had to look at the empty half of a bed I had shared with a lie. I didn’t have to feel the shame slinking around corners and seeping like farts under a bathroom door. I had just turned twenty-six and I was free.
All the same, there was this lingering ‘dirty’ feeling I carried around. It’s hard on anyone to get left for another lover. Harder still when that other lover is another gender. I mean, how do you fight that? But what did it say about me as a woman that the guy I chose preferred to suck strange dick in the dark, sleazy bowels of the worst part of town? That was more than simply making a bad choice. It was downright ridiculously wrong.
The whole singles scene opened up to me and I had plenty of offers. I'm not trying to toot my own horn here but when word got out that Trina Ferreti was back on the market, guys I went to school with, guys who knew me from the neighborhood and friends of friends started calling. Not to mention the effort that every one of my relatives put into fixing me up. You'd think that being single was a crime. My aunts, uncles and cousins (all gazillion of them) were on a mission.
I politely refused all comers. I told myself that divorce is expensive and I needed to pour my energy and my time into my work. I told myself I needed time. Truth is, at that point I didn't know if there was enough time left in my life to ever want another man in it.
