The Woodchuck Terrier, Hank Dolworth

There were squirrels or woodchucks or some animal or other on the title page of the show I was watching on my television and the heading had little to nothing to do with what was happening on the screen. The story was following a line of cuckolding which was of interest to a person like me. Seems the wife in the story was required to cheat on her husband and report the act in detail back to her husband in order to save her marriage. Her husband, being an admitted masochist, needed to know for a fact that she was actually going through with it because for one reason or another he just did not believe she was cheating on him. Forgive me if the concept confusing but the show's creators had the bumbling detective working for the husband by spying on his wife in order to secure a loan for a house the detective wanted to buy back from his ex-wife who the detective is still in love with but she is newly engaged to be married. In the course of events, while following the banker's wife, the detective is found out by the banker's wife and confronted and it is through this new personal relationship with the wife that the private eye learns the sordid details of their marriage. The wife confesses to the show's lead detective that she did go through with the banker's request for adultery the first time, but then he insisted she routinely continue the behavior with all the subsequent and hoped for shanky details to follow. The banker's wife told the private eye that she had no interest in continuing with adulterous behavior, that she was forced to lie about her dalliances, and the present ruse was driving her crazy, her making up stories of infidelity, dining alone, providing receipts of lunches with wine, and visiting museums and such as an additional method in which to prove she did have the sort of date with another man her husband was expecting of her. The absurd concept of their arrangement was the banker husband's insistence on divorcing her if she did not comply with his adulterous demands.

The detective could not grasp the fundamental concept of the banker's desire to have his attractive wife cuckold him, and in no uncertain terms the private eye expressed his unbelief that there were people out there in the world who did this sort of thing. He thought the banker must be crazy. He thought certainly that everyone must also think the banker crazy. At this point in the show I am questioning whether or not the show's writers did this on purpose, asking this question, or were feeding on the frenzy of the male ego, the neanderthal upbringing of most males born in the USA. In my own studies I have found that psychologically speaking it is every man's wish to see his partner sexually with another man, or in many cases even another woman, or in some cases, both. It is not the unusual, or even unnatural act that the private eye was making it out to be for the common man. It is what turns a man on. If there were no threat of losing one's lover to another then the mating dance would never had to occur in the first place. We are not wolves or swans that mate for life. Though some of us do attempt the impossible, as my wife and I have been married already for twenty-eight years.

The story line continued on with the detective using his business partner as a make-believe lover to the wife, and their adulterous motel date was staged and photographed for the husband to see for himself the factual truth in what his wife had been reporting to him all along. And the detective's loan is now secured and the marriage relationship saved, all for the proof of the cuckolding demanded as the husband's terms for which their relationship shall thrive. But the wife, being an honest woman and from an ex profession that diligently and sometimes desperately digs for honesty, she could not persist confidently in her ruse, and the husband consequently not believing her claims and himself doing a little Google search of the detective finds the business partner to be the planted adulterer and the entire event shown in all its light to be fraudulent. When confronted, the wife confesses, and unknown to the forlorn detective the loan approval is called off. But in the meantime, the wife visits the private eye in order to responsibly inform him of her confession, and then the most unlikely scenario takes place, given what they both had proclaimed earlier, and these two ethical beings spend the night together in bed.

Now, for me, the unbelievable part was the woman expressing her deep and abiding love of her husband to the detective throughout the first half hour of the show and explaining her actual agreeing to the cuckolding initially as being the supreme act needed to save her marriage. The fact that she was a psychologist who gave up her practice in order to marry her husband who happened to be a patient of hers was also pretty corny. Again, the screenwriters seemed to want to make something of nothing by portraying the doctor sicker than her patient. Add that the doctor was extremely sexy and almost anyone with a functioning sexual organ would have wanted intercourse with her if she were remotely available. Consider the detective who thought it insane for a husband to want his wife to sleep with another man, and memories of Saturday Night Live's, The Church Lady, come conjuring immediately to my mind.

I have always imagined my wife being with many different men throughout the rolling away of stones and years while being married to her. I confess I have even considered her being a highly-paid prostitute. Prior to our marriage I was sickened by the idea of somebody other than me sleeping with her, intimately entering the hidden places only meant for me. But after landing my prize lady, often I could be caught with thoughts of sharing her with others of my choosing. I believed she was the most marvelous woman I had ever seen or been with. I wanted my very best friends to sexually enjoy just once what I enjoyed on a daily basis. I fantasized that the relationship could be compartmentalized so that every once in a while a few special others in our life could partake in our holy matrimony. And that nothing and nobody would ever come between us. And that the sex would always be good and we would be willing and eager collaborators in our mutual adventurous life design. I imagined my friends all thanking me for the opportunity of sharing with me the most wondrous body on the planet. And that no one would ever forsake me and attempt to steal from me the greatest love of my life.

Of course it never happened. Not yet anyway. But I still think about it. And I am not ashamed to admit it. I think it is normal and healthy no matter what the hairy apes and church ladies out there claim as otherwise. And I think it is high time somebody said something intelligent about it instead of making up stories that shame and incite acts like suicide. The ending of the woodchuck story line comes when the banker husband finally leaps to his death from his high rise window after the private eye, in order to re-secure his loan, claims and proves to the cuckold banker husband that he himself banged the banker's adulterous wife for hours just the night before. I could not decide for me why in the world the banker jumped. But, like the band The Who from a life in the Sixties, "I can't explain but I think it's love."