The Mare

Ginger

Like I didn’t already know there must be a reason that he’d suddenly become so kind and understanding of Velvet and me, that he’d stopped with the racial piety about how really, while I think I love her, it’s actually white guilt or something even more perverted and sick; it can’t possibly be what it looks like or feels like to me. Frankly, it was such a relief not to hear that shit anymore that I’d rather he shut up and “cheat” if it meant he could leave us alone or even actually show support and back me up like with the substitute. Cheat. What a stupid word, like you’re playing cards and your partner cheats and the whole deck has to rise up and attack you, both of you, him because he didn’t play right, and me because — why? Because I didn’t catch him? Because therefore I’m now “humiliated,” officially? Well, guess what? Here’s the good thing, the one good thing, the one good thing about being the girl on the side where the guy goes to act like he can’t with his main squeeze: you realize it doesn’t mean anything much except he feels like doing it with somebody else. The wife isn’t “humiliated” or unloved or anything. If that’s happening to anybody, it’s usually the other one. He says he’s not even seeing her anymore, but still here he is with his AA face on talking about amends and wanting to feel close again. All of it, the piety, the careful examining and blaming of himself for daring to want sex, of me for being — what? A guilty white person who must be doing something wrong? That attitude is so much more disgusting than his wanting strange pussy, not to mention his hard, fake self-righteous friends. Starting with that bitch he used to be married to.