Chapter 11: The Truth Has It's Own Gravity

Trust is a fragile and delicate thing. From the moment we’re born, our life is placed in the hands of others we want and need to trust, from those we choose to be in our lives to those we do not choose, such as a parent. Traditional wedding vows include words to love, honor, cherish, respect – even obey, but there is no mention of trust or honesty.

The illusion of trust was shattered when I discovered Bill using Craigslist to hook up with other CDs.  On the surface, everything seemed relatively normal in the weeks and months that followed. We carried on our day-to-day routines, celebrated our first wedding anniversary, traveled, worked on remodeling the house, and continued to play our dom/sub games in the bedroom as if nothing had happened.

It was a weak façade as there was a deep and swift undercurrent where suspicions stayed, where unanswered questions waited, and where secrets continued to thrive. The voice in my head was constantly telling me to pay attention because something was off. Subtle changes occurred in the aftermath.

Bill quickly changed his computer password, but I had full access to his email through our internet provider, and he knew it. His email and phone were clean – no unusual texts, contacts, photos – nothing.  That in itself was suspicious.

Bill was suddenly adding to his femme wardrobe with the most raunchy and slutty attire he could find. He was never into wearing women’s “street” clothes, such as dresses, gowns, skirts, blouses, etc. Bill was into the skanky whore look, such as ripping holes into his stockings to give him a trampy feel. Bill was also asking me to take more and more photos and videos of him dressed in trampy outfits, in lewd poses, and close-ups of his back-end stuffed with dildos and nasty words and phrases written on his butt. 

In early July of 2016, seven months after discovering the reply to the Craigslist ad, I found a portable flash drive Bill kept hidden in the lunch bag he took to work each day. I copied it to my computer and pulled it up the next day after he left for work. One password-protected document was labeled “Accounts,” but I hacked it open on the third try using one of Bill’s favorite passwords.” It contained a detailed listing of user names and passwords to all of Bill’s accounts and website services. One category was titled “entertainment” and held the login information for the various swinger sites we had been on the year before, but one website I was not familiar with from our pursuits – “Fetlife.[1]”

Naturally, I pulled up the website and entered his user name and password to access the account. The screen came to life with sexually graphic images of Bill from the photos I had taken of him during our passionate role-playing. Although Bill’s face did not appear in any of the pictures, every other part of his body was exposed.

My jaw dropped, and I gasped for air as I scrolled through dozens of his profile photos and explicit comments from his over 50 ‘friends and followers,’ most of whom were men who commented on his ‘sweet ass’ and how much they wanted to ‘take it’ long and hard. Bill wrote in his profile summary that he was a ‘sub’ who loved cocks and the taste of cum and how he wanted to experience being bottomed. He described in exact detail wanting to sit on top while being penetrated by a guy on the bottom. In the gay community, one is either a self-proclaimed top, bottom, or versatile, meaning they will give or receive oral and anal sex. Bill had no interest other than being on the receiving end of whatever his friends were willing to give.

Bill communicated regularly with one follower who repeatedly invited him to attend gay sex parties in the local area. The most recent exchange with his special fan was only a few days prior when Bill was invited to participate in a gay orgy in a hotel room that evening.  Bill replied, “LOL.  Can’t make it tonight, but maybe next week.” (That next week, I was scheduled to travel on business and would be out of town for three nights. I never made it to the plane.)

My hands were shaking so badly I could hardly control the mouse. I managed to click on the link to Bill’s account and discovered he launched his profile almost immediately after we clashed over Craigslist in early December 2015.

As I read through his account and the countless posts, my body finally gave way to the distress, and I started to hyperventilate. I pushed myself away from the desk and wandered aimlessly through the house, uttering “Oh My God” over and over. I made my way to the kitchen just in time to vomit in the sink. The shock had drained every ounce of energy from my body. No longer able to hold myself up from emotional exhaustion, I fell to the floor in a heap sobbing uncontrollably.

I had no idea how long I laid on the floor; I must have passed out. The familiar sound of my cell phone ding, signaling an incoming text, awakened me from the catatonic state I had fallen into after the tears stopped. It was Bill asking me how my day was going.  His casual banter made me sick all over again, but this time rage replaced tears.

Ignoring his text, I forced my way back to the computer. Glowing from the oversized monitor was a photo of Bill stretched out face down on the bed, his ass stuffed with a big black dildo and the words ‘cock slut’ written across his butt in purple ink. I sat down again and checked out the rest of his profile, where I quickly learned the mystery of the characters ‘jtomv.301’ associated with the Fetlife entry in the document.  It was a Gmail address. He had left off the .com, so I didn’t recognize it as an email. Until then, I also hadn’t realized the characters were his PD call sign and badge number.

Could he have been that obvious and stupid? I pulled up Gmail and entered his email address along with the same password he used for FetLife. It was all too easy to access. I typed the letter “C” in the To field of the address header and saw all of the Craigslist addresses to the personal ads he had responded to since creating his secret email.

I typed each letter of the alphabet in the address header and identified dozens of other contacts after they escalated their online relationship beyond Craigslist. At this point, I was so disgusted and angry I forgot to print screenshots of his profile.  It was a mistake I would come to regret, but a mistake I would not make again.

It was a sobering thought to think about the health risks I might have been exposed to through his exploits with other men. I was incensed that Bill had jeopardized me in such a manner and for such selfish reasons. The visceral hatred I felt for Bill at that moment was overwhelming. The only thing I was thankful for was the fact that Brian was with his dad because the confrontation that evening and the fallout in the days that followed were brutal.

The discovery of Bill’s profile on Fetlife was just another episode in a long string of discoveries of him pimping himself out to other men over the internet that would continue for several years afterward. Bill had no idea I had uncovered his Gmail account or was accessing it to uncover his activities and private communications with his CD friends. A few weeks later, I watched in real-time as Bill took photos of his erect dick and emailed them one of his Craigslist friends. He was in his truck just down the block from our house.

It took longer to figure out his computer password, but eventually, I figured it out. His internet browsing history revealed an addiction to gay porn, but a very particular kind of gay porn that involved passable trannies and inhaling poppers as part of a disturbing form of hypnosis aimed to feminize the viewer and turn them off to wanting real women.

For the next two years, Bill and I engaged in a macabre game of hide-and-seek.  Bill would hide his exploits, I would find them, expose him, and the cycle of denials and promises to never do it again would start all over. The one question I always asked was why he married me? And, I always made the statement that he had no right to live two lives. If he wanted to live the life of a single man to do as he pleases and with whom, he was free to pursue that life, but he could not continue to be married – not to me.

A sex therapist I engaged to help me understand the psychology behind his behavior was convinced Bill had a kind of sex addiction that she thought he used to ease his suffering from PTSD during his time as a cop. She had treated many clients who had various types of sex addiction, but she said she had never encountered a case such as the one I presented. Bill attended one session and was so hostile, he refused to even tell her his name.

Bill was never sorry for anything except getting caught. He was sorry I felt the way I did and that I chose to believe “certain things about him,” but he was never sorry or apologized for hurting me.  It was also beyond maddening to witness him try to escape blame by transferring the anger back at me as if I were doing these things to him.

The time I spent seeking the truth about Bill’s secret behavior and his sexual addictions was emotionally and physically exhausting – it made me ill, but the truth has its own gravity and one is drawn to it.

[1] Fetlife is a social networking website that began in 2008 aimed at people interested in fetishism, BDSM, kink, and fringe sexual experiences. It promotes itself as a social network rather than a dating site. It temporarily shut down the ability to create new groups in January 2017 when it attempted to eliminate groups that promoted rape and incest. Today, it has millions of members around the world.