ED’S WIFE: Would you like another corn muffin, dear?
ED: I’m not having an affair with a woman in my office!
Most affairs occur at the office, of course, which leads us to another important rule of affair-having: Never be discreet at the Office. To illustrate why this is important, let’s consider two people, Ellen and Chuck, who have worked together in a large corporate office for several years, and have recently started having an affair.
Up to this point, Ellen and Chuck have probably been behaving the way men and women always behave in offices, which is to say: constantly winking and leering and engaging in loud and fun suggestive sexual banter. Behaving like lust-crazed fools has been a major form of entertainment in offices for as long as anybody can remember; in terms of total American corporation employee hours consumed, suggestive banter ranks well ahead of work, and only slightly behind making Xerox copies of personal documents.
But like so many couples, Chuck and Ellen, now that they are engaging in real, as opposed to pretend, sexual activity, suddenly decide they have to be discreet. They never banter. They never eat lunch together any more. They walk past each other without even looking at each other. When they are forced, by circumstances, to be together, they display the same kind of warmth and closeness toward each other as the Vice-president of the United States displays toward deceased heads of state. They are formal and cool.
They are also morons. The other employees, who, if they have been in the corporate world more than six weeks, have already witnessed hundreds of other major office affairs, will immediately recognize the cause of this sudden change in behavior. Ellen and Chuck might just as well go around wearing convention-style nametags that say: HI! MY NAME IS ELLEN! I’M HAVING AN AFFAIR WITH CHUCKI!
Within days everybody in the office will know what’s going on. The affair will be discussed extensively in staff meetings. It could well appear in the annual report to the stockholders.
What this means, of course, is that if you want your affair to go unnoticed by your co-workers, you have to be blatantly obvious about it. Chuck should wait until the office is extremely quiet, then stand up at his desk and shout across 47 desks to Ellen: “HEY ELLEN! WHAT DO YOU SAY WE MEET AT THE OUT O’TOWN MOTOR LODGE AFTER WORK TODAY AND HAVE SEXUAL INTERCOURSE!” And Ellen should shout back: “HECK YES!! I HAVE MY DIAPHRAGM RIGHT HERE IN MY PURSE!”
Chuck’s and Ellen’s co-workers would never suspect a thing. “What a couple of kidders Chuck and Ellen are!” the co-workers would chuckle.
How You Can Tell If Your Spouse Is Having an Affair
You can always tell. No matter how careful your spouse is, he or she is going to make a mistake somewhere, and you’ll catch it, if you know the Major Warning Signs, which are:
1. Your spouse acts strange.
2. Your spouse, trying to trick you, acts normal.
If you notice either of these Warning Signs, you should wait until your spouse is in a vulnerable position, such as reclining in a dental chair, and then you should point-blank ask the following gently probing question (if your spouse is male): “Well? Who is she?”
Now listen closely to the answer. If it’s something specific like: “You mean the person I’m having an affair with? She is Dorina Mae Swiggins,” that means your suspicions are probably justified. But if it’s something evasive like: “What are you talking about?” or “Who is Who?”, then you quite frankly have to ask yourself how come your spouse is refusing to answer a simple direct question. Either way, this would be a good time to read the next chapter.
Chapter 11. How To Put New Life Into Your Marriage Or Else Get A Divorce
Time takes its toll on every marriage. The sense of romance and adventure that you feel as you take your wedding vows on that bright Saturday afternoon in June inevitably gives way to familiarity and even boredom, often as early as 8:30 that evening. Yet some couples seem to go on happily forever, a good example being Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, former owners of the Philippines. Long ago, they discovered a secret that has worked its magic for many successful couples: thoughtfulness. Ferdinand and Imelda were always showing each other, in little ways, that they cared. For example, when Imelda would get depressed because of the hassle and strain of everyday life, plus the fact that she was bloating up like an inflatable life raft, Ferdinand would say to her: “Buttercup, you look depressed. Why not take the national treasury and purchase every luxury consumer object in France?” This thoughtful gesture never failed to perk her up.
Of course you may not be in a position to demonstrate quite that level of care, but there are things you can do to show your commitment to each other—little, thoughtful, romantic gestures that say you still think the other person is “somebody special.” For example, you can:
1. Try to remember (you guys, especially) to flush the toilet.
2. Remember your spouse’s birthday. “Hey!” you can say. “Wasn’t your birthday last month?”
3. Go dancing, or even ...
4. Go dancing with your spouse.
5. On your anniversary, give your spouse an appropriate traditional gift for whatever year it is, as shown on the accompanying chart:
Number Of Anniversary Traditional Gift
1st Ore
5th McNuggets
10th Veg-o-Matic
15th Oil change
20th “Slim” whitman album
30th TV tray or assault rifle
40th Frankincense
50th Ointment
60th Suppository
70th Indonesian Fighting Snake
6. Consider renewing your wedding vows. The best place to do this is Las Vegas, where “wedding chapels” are a major industry, along with divorce, gambling, and scorpion paperweights. My wife and I renewed our vows in Vegas a little while back, on a Friday the 13th, in the very same chapel
(everything I am telling you here is the truth) where Joan Collins got married her third or fourth time. The whole thing took less than four minutes and cost only $50, plus a tip for the minister, who was named (I swear) Dr. Eva C. Tubby.
7. Go on a Get-away Vacation Fling. just the two of you. One day, when the pressure gets to be too much, you should just say to your spouse, out of the blue: “Let’s go!” Then you should impulsively throw a few items into
a suitcase, jump into a cab, race to the airport, and hop on the next plane to Hawaii, or the Caribbean, or Europe, or wherever you want to go. Why not? You’ll be glad you did it. Once you’re up in the air, settled back in your seats, sipping champagne (Why not?), the two of you can hold hands, close your eyes, and just let your minds drift away to ... THE
CHILDREN!! MY GOD, YOU FORGOT THE CHILDREN!!! TURN THE PLANE BACK RIGHT