Pie

I just ate an entire pie by myself. Society would say that eating an entire pie in a single sitting is gluttonous. I can say with complete confidence that I do not care. 

Do you want to hear another thing? I enjoyed every goddamn minute of it. Every crumb, decedent and sweet, flooded my brain with more endorphins than I’ve experienced in 12 years. The experience was almost orgasmic. I’m surprised I didn’t cum in my khaki pants six times as I gorged myself. Maybe I knew the possibilities of happiness at one point in time, long ago, but since then I’ve forgotten.

My wife couldn’t have made a pie like that one. That alone is sad enough. 12 years of marriage, even more dating, and yet again more before we met, and she never learned how to bake. Is that really too much to ask? It’s not like she had much to do a majority of the time. For the first few years before the kids came along, she constantly complained about being bored at home. I would recommend that she get a job to give her something to do, but then she’d accuse me of being insensitive. She shouldn’t have to work because I make plenty. Who would keep the house clean and the garden tended if she was at work all day? I’d tell her that she was full of shit if I didn’t have a brain. Instead, she started various expensive hobbies that she would act interested in for a month or two and then ditch like the baby she conceived on prom night. She keeps relics of her abandoned hobbies such as a crocheted scarf she never wore or a misshapen pot. To her, they were objects of pride; something she’d made with her own hands that she could never throw away. To me, they were constant reminders of the hundreds of dollars wasted on yarn that would eventually be given to the GoodWill; or the thousand dollars I spent on a kiln because she ‘just needed it’. 

She went through all that bullshit instead of learning how to follow a simple recipe to bake a strawberry pie for her (at that time) loving husband whose wallet acted as her personal ATM machine. I guess that was too much to ask for. Instead, I made this pie myself. I wouldn’t say that I’m the best baker, but I watched my mother make a hundred pies. I think it turned out better than expected. Due to the circumstances, it turned out to be a savory pie rather than a sweet one, but it was delicious all the same.

Now you may ask yourself, what brings a man to eat an entire pie by himself? Before today, I would have never humored the thought of it. Since the kids were born I’ve been trying to eat well. When they were still babies it was a question of whether I’d even be alive to see them graduate from high school. So I started cutting out all those pesky little habits and coping mechanisms that had been my crutch during the beginning of our marriage. My doctor was becoming proud of me for cutting down on the beer and the smokes. I was doing great. Why throw it all away? Well, the answer to that requires a bit of backstory.

It all started when I was born. Okay, maybe not that much backstory.

My troubles actually started in college. Before then, I was on top of the world. How could I not be? I was the star quarterback and led our team to an almost perfect season all four years. Sadly, it would seem that I peaked in high school. Once I transitioned to the local community college things started going downhill. On the butt end of it, I found myself with a useless degree, a drinking and smoking problem, and the start of a bulbous gut. Multiple factors influenced this. There was a DoublePatty Palace two blocks from my dorm that offered 3 for $5 burgers every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. There was also a Big Al’s Chicken Shack a block in the other direction, and who can pass up Big Al’s when it’s that close, am I right? I tore a tendon in my leg that took me off of the football team. I could have gone back the following season, but the burgers had kicked in by then. I dated a hot goth chick who hater herself and drowned herself in alcohol and cheap cigarettes. Our relationship was toxic but she loved to fuck and her body was a ten. I just had to get past the cutting scars and smokers’ breath. 

All of that culminated in a broken man who barely graduated with a communications degree and a heavy dependence on alcohol. Like many, I found it very difficult to find a job upon leaving college. I ended up at the local Belk as a checkout clerk in the men’s section. It would be there that I met my wife. She too worked at the Belk but in the jewelry section. She was a hot blond with a round ass and a full chest, freely flaunting both for the world to see. I definitely wasn’t complaining. In fact, I fell head over heels for her.

At first, she didn’t give me the time of day. I don’t blame her. As I said, I looked like shit and wasn’t making any effort to get back my athletic physique. That was until I got promoted to the sales floor manager. Now let me tell you, that two dollar raise got her attention. Once I put on the manager’s jacket, she was all over me. Yeah, maybe I should have realized that she was a gold digger right then and there, but I was still young and blinded by the low-cut shirts she was always wearing.

The first date we went out on was dinner. It was awkward and the small talk was shallow, but I think it went okay. When we got back to her place, she offered me a blowjob. Sure, another red flag, but I hadn’t gotten any in a while and I was beyond grateful to have this hottie spitshine my shaft. Looking back on it now, a woman will never offer a blowjob unless she wants something. It is safe to say that she got every day off and vacation that she requested. Things went on like that for a while, I continued moving up in the company, we started screwing, I thought I was living the life. I got a raise, she’d mention moving in together. Another raise, let’s get married. Another, how about kids, John? 

I was nothing more than putty in her perfectly manicured hands!

Can you really blame me though? I was an ugly piece of shit, working a job I hated, but I was getting laid by a beautiful woman almost daily. When she was giving me attention, it felt like I was back in high school. It felt so wonderful to be wanted. I’m sure it’s obvious by now that she didn’t want me, she wanted my money. By the time the kids came along, I was the head of HR at Belk in our state and I made damn good money. I gave her a wonderful life, children; anything she asked for, she could have. 

We had two children. James was five and Samantha was just turning two. At our daughter's birthday party, I had a self-realization moment. I had to run up and down the stairs, bringing things down from our storage room to the backyard. By the second accent, I was out of breath, sweating like my mother in law, and keeled over on the stairs. I looked down at my gigantic gut, I reached up and felt my quickly receding hairline, and I realized that I was deep in shit. My better days were behind me and I doubted if I’d live long enough to see my grandchildren. Another factor was that the ol’ ball and chain wasn’t putting out anymore. She got all that she wanted without the sex nowadays, so why keep it up?

So here’s what I did: I quit smoking, cold turkey. I stopped drinking; this took a bit of weaning, but it was done. I cut down on sweets and fast food. I started exercising. I started by walking around the neighborhood. Then I bought a bike and started biking to work. I bought a gym membership. I went in hard and made some damn good progress. I was proud of myself. My wife gave passing, half-hearted praise, but that was okay. I was beginning to resent her anyways.

Here’s a good point to bring our relationship back up. Say your partner starts improving themselves, wouldn’t you encourage them? Give them some praise for their efforts? I sure as hell would have, but the most she could give was a ‘good job’ if I ever mentioned my progress. I should have seen something. I’m sure the signs were right in front of my face, but I didn’t see them. Maybe I did, but my mind wouldn’t believe it. I’m a wishful thinker I guess. I figured that we were just in a rut, we needed to start trying harder. I brought it up to her one night and she agreed, but it didn’t change anything. The only thing she really cared about was the kids.

Everything changed for me when I was going through our phone bill and noticed that her phone had sent at least ten times the number of texts that I had. I use my personal phone for work, so I usually text a lot, but she had tens of thousands of messages sent in a span of 30 days. This definitely piqued my interest, so I looked into it out of curiosity. It turned out that thousands upon thousands of texts were going to a phone number that I didn’t recognize. There was no way to see the messages without getting to her phone sadly, but I did start noticing more peculiar things going on. She was going out for drinks with the girls a lot more than I remembered her doing before. She kept her phone very close to her and didn’t let it out of her sight. Hell, she even slept with the phone under her pillow. 

I just had to know if I was going crazy or if she was sneaking around. So I started following her around. Call me petty, but I needed to know and I sure as hell wasn’t going to just ask her. I took the night off of work, dropped the kids off at my mother’s, and followed her around town. She’d told me before that she and her gal-pals from high school were going out for a few drinks and that she’d be back before I got home from work. Instead of going to an Applebees or something with the girls, she met a man at a cafe. He was at least 5 years younger than her and had a constant smug look. His hair was slicked back and he rocked a clean five-o-clock shadow that put any sorry excuse for facial hair I could grow to shame. They embraced, kissed, and then went inside the cafe.

I don’t know how to explain what happened to me. For most people, I’d assume that their world would crumble around them. It would feel like they’re in an earthquake, asphalt cracking beneath their feet. I didn’t feel that way. I think the best way to describe how I felt was enlightened. Upon seeing that smug asshole kiss my wife, I knew exactly what I had to do. 

After leaving the cafe, the first stop I made was to the grocery store to buy the pie crust. I bought the most expensive pre-made one I could find. I didn’t have the expertise or time to make my own. After that, I picked up the kids from my mother's house. She was surprised to see me back so soon, but I told her that I’d left early so that I could have more time with them before my wife got home. I knew that I had to be quick with them. Their mother would be returning in a couple of hours.

The pie came out of the oven only an hour and a half after I returned home. My timing was impeccable, especially considering the circumstances. I had made sweet pies before, but never a meat pie. It turned out better than expected. The chunks of meat were seasoned well and they were so small and tender that they melted in my mouth. I didn’t even make much of a mess in the kitchen! The bathroom is another story. I put a tarp down on the floor, but I’m pretty sure the blood is gonna stain the walls. The hacksaw made a lot more of a mess than I thought it would. 

I don’t really care about that, though. My wife should be home from her little date any minute now. I should have saved her a piece in retrospect, but I just couldn’t help myself. Now that I think about it, there should be enough left on James to make another pie, if only I had more crust. Well, I never was one for thinking ahead.