an extramarital affair.
She thought there would be some complication with getting a night away from her husband and son. She wondered if she could do it on a lunch break, or if she could possibly take an afternoon off work by telling her employers that she had a doctor’s appointment. Maybe she could even use a visit with her sister, who lived a few hours away, as an excuse. It seemed to her that it wouldn’t be prohibitively difficult to find the time. But actually meeting the man she would have an affair with seemed strange to her. Even though she knew she was being paranoid, she had some reservation that such a man might turn out to be a serial killer or a rapist. Obviously no one would know what she was really doing, or where she was really going, when she met the person. She would be helpless if indeed this theoretical person arrived at their chosen meeting spot with nefarious intent.
When she got to work, she powered up her computer, sent a few work-related e-mails, got a cup of coffee and bagel, printed out a memo detailing the delinquent accounts she was responsible for overseeing, put that memo on her manager’s desk. Then she pulled out her personal laptop, so as to avoid being caught using her work computer for non-work-related activities, and logged on to AshleyMadison.com.
She was able to create a free profile within a few minutes. She wrote a brief paragraph describing what she was hoping to find on the site: a man to make her remember what it was like to enjoy sex. She opted to omit her picture from the profile, thinking that perhaps someone she knew might also be a member of the site. But then it occurred to her that, even if that were the case, this person would also want to keep their involvement with the site discreet, so they would have no reason ever to reveal their discovery of her account. To quell whatever anxiety she had about the issue, she took a picture of herself with the digital camera mounted in the top of her MacBook’s screen, cropped it so that her head was not visible, and posted it.
Seeing herself without a face, Rachel became painfully aware of the fact that she had gained weight. She knew that this was the case, but seeing herself like this made her question why her husband still wanted to have sex with her as frequently as he did. She thought about retaking the picture, but didn’t. She felt it was better for her potential affair partner to know exactly what to expect, were they actually to meet, and in some way she also hoped it would deter anyone from actually soliciting her. Cheating on her husband was not something she took lightly. She convinced herself that she was signing up on AshleyMadison.com more out of curiosity than anything. Even if she was to get an interested party, she would more than likely ignore him.
With that in mind, she published her profile, logged out, and told herself that she would check her account after lunch to see if anyone had sent her any indication of interest.
D on Truby sat at his desk on that same Monday morning wondering if he would have enough time to go home and masturbate at lunch. He doubted he would, but after a weekend in which his wife verbally agreed to a sexual encounter when she was half-asleep, but never delivered, Don needed to masturbate.
He knew his supervisor wasn’t going to be in for at least another forty-five minutes to an hour, as was the case on Monday mornings, and his supervisor was the only person who might be looking for him. Don closed his office door with the intent of looking at enough vaguely erotic Internet images—images that would not be blocked by his company’s firewall or filters—to arouse him to the point that he could go into the men’s bathroom on the first floor, where there were no Northwestern Mutual employees, and masturbate quickly into the toilet.
He started at ModelMayhem.com, a website where amateur and aspiring models would post their pictures, allowing aspiring or established
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