Pushing the Envelope is about Gil Freeman and Kim Murdock's affair. Both are in mid-life crises. It is conceived as a novel where I can use almost any fantasy between two people. If I can write about it, Kim and Gil can do it.
The novel is told in multiple first-person viewpoints, starting with Gil Freeman, then Kim Murdock, then Gil again. At least one later chapter is told from the viewpoint of Paul Murdock, and there may be a chapter told by Inez. I had originally planned to have Renee tell a chapter as well, but I'm re-thinking that.
The broad outline of the novel is plotted; I know how it ends, for instance, and the last two pages have been written for some time. There will be a dozen chapters, and it should edge just past 60,000 words, making it truly novel-sized. What I'm not entirely sure of is who the best person is to tell each chapter.
Well, partly it's because I make a lot of false starts. For instance, I wrote about half of chapter 3, and then my wife convinced me that it shouldn't be from Paul's point of view, it should be from Gil's. While Paul is a part of this affair, he's not important enough to have a chapter this soon.
For your interest, here's part of the false start from Chapter 3. Note that even though this version of the chapter is thrown out, the events still took place; readers of the final version may not know about them, that's all.
If nothing else, you can see how sloppy my first drafts are. (Incidentally, I write the sex last, after I know the rest of the chapter. That's why there's no sex here.)
Some days, I figure I'll never understand women. Two days ago, my wife Kim and I had a serious, knock-down drag-out fight, about nothing at all, which is the way it's been going lately. I made sure to leave the office on time yesterday and got home spot on five-fifteen, but you couldn't tell we'd ever had a fight. She was happy and content, humming to herself as we made dinner and got the kids under control. We've been married sixteen years and yesterday, it was like I was at home with a stranger. On the quiet, I checked the liquor cabinet, because lately Kim's had a tendency to hit the sauce while I'm out. Usually that's in the evenings but you never know. The Amaretto bottle didn't look like it had been touched. I got the kids packed up for karate class and when we got back, she was just getting off the phone with Inez, her best friend. Isn't it funny how women keep having best friends as they get older, but most guys stop? I don't have anyone I'd call my "best" friend. We got the boys off to bed---Trevor gets to stay up longer, but in his room, so there's less arguing---and then we had some time to ourselves. You know, she was so content, she had me spooked. Usually, that means she's made up her mind about something but I couldn't figure out what. When I went into the kitchen to get us coffee, I checked the liquor cabinet again, but she hadn't had anything. She thanked me for her coffee and then went back to her book. "What are you reading?" I asked her. "Oh, just female pornography," she said and held it up. I laughed, because it was one of those romances with a long-haired bare-chested guy on the cover. "Getting any ideas?" I asked her. She smiled. "A couple," she said. "Involving me, I hope." "Of course," she said. I bent over and gave her a kiss. She snaked her tongue inside my mouth, which was a surprise, and a pleasant one. I keep wishing she'd be a little more forward when it comes to sex, you know? I pulled back and gave her a look. "Somebody's hot tonight." "Are you saying you're not?" Something about her tone just about killed the mood for me right there, but look, if I turned her down _every_ time, she'd never start anything. "That's not what I'm saying at all." I French-kissed her, exploring her mouth. Our tongues met. I pulled mine back, willing to let her lead, but she didn't. Frustrated, I pulled her shirt up to expose her bra. I remember a time, before the boys, when she didn't always wear a bra. Sometimes she talks like she's mad she has to wear one now, but personally I like the feeling of discovery as her bra comes off. I was about to start kissing and nibbling her breasts through her bra, but she reached up and unhooked it, letting them free. ...[insert foreplay here] And just as I was about to enter her, I remembered. "Ooops," I told her. "Condom." I rolled off the bed and started searching through the drawer of my bedside table. I felt so stupid standing there in my boxers, looking for a condom. She really was right, I ought to get the vasectomy. I didn't mention it, though. "The mood" is fragile. ...[insert sex scene here] The nice thing about condoms is that you don't have that unromantic moment of passing your wife a tissue to catch the gob of come that's about to leak onto the sheets. Normally I'd turn on the TV, but instead I just watched her reading. Kim's still beautiful, you know? I mean, I've been going to seed, but Kim, she gets better-looking every year. I should have told her, but I didn't. I'm no good with words. I just watched her and I ached inside because she was so beautiful. "Hey," I said. She looked up again. "Everything you do," I told her. "I appreciate it." She frowned so I tried to explain. "The kids, you know. You take care of the kids and you keep the house even though you didn't want to, and, shit, I don't know. Everything. You're special. You're _good_. You're better than I am by a long shot." "You mean I'm too good for you," she said. "Yeah." She shook her head. "When are you going to take me off this pedestal, Paul?" "I'm not---" "Yes you _are_," she said. "You've got me up here where I can't do anything." I was desperately searching my mind for whatever I'd done that had triggered this. "You can do anything you want," I told her. "You can go back to work if you want. I told you that was okay with me. The boys are old enough." "Not work, Paul. Jesus," she said, and rolled over. I lay there in the dark, after the best sex we'd had in maybe ten years, wondering what the hell I'd done wrong. What I'd done wrong this time. * * * The next day I left work early. It's one of the perks of being the boss; I try not to do it very often. I've seen bosses who do, they figure they worked seventeen hours a day in the early years so they deserve some time off. That kills your relationship with the new employees, the ones who weren't there in the early years. I try to work a full day or more; that's one of the things that Kim hates. She's always early to things, I'm always late. I was intending to go home and surprise Kim but I grassed out at the last minute. I was circling the part of town where the strip clubs are but had kind of decided against that when I spotted Gil Freeman going into a sex shop. Gil had pulled me out of the last strip club I'd been in. I quickly parked and followed him in. Gil's a good guy. He's a salesman, sells envelopes, but he doesn't _act_ like a salesman --- not everybody's his friend, you know. He'll sell you something cheaper if it meets your needs, and he'll tell you to your face if he thinks you're making a mistake. I'd figure he gets the women --- he takes care of himself, he's friendly, and our receptionist Maria likes him, which is usually a good sign. I like him, too. It was a pretty nice shop, all things considered. It was clean and bright. A pock-faced girl in a pink blouse was behind the counter, and Gil was chatting to her. There were a bunch of boxes on the counter. I held back a moment because it could be business for him; I mean, hell, even sex shops need envelopes. Plain brown ones, I'd guess. When he had the girl bring down a box from behind the counter, I was pretty sure it wasn't business. "Gil," I said. He seemed surprised to see me, but he shook my hand and said, "Paul." He turned to the girl and said, "Barb, this is Paul. He's with Murdock Construction." I picked up the box: it was a butt-plug. "For you?" He shook his head. "Not this one," he said. I laughed. "It's a gift." "Lady friend?" He nodded. "You move fast." I waved my hand. "You know some interesting ladies." The girl behind the counter was looking at me like I was behaving badly. "That's true," he said. "I do." He turned to the girl and said, "What do you recommend for lube?" I just stood back and watched. I mean, I go into these shops once in a while for a magazine or something but Gil was doing serious shopping. He bought two vibrators (one shaped like a dick, one not), a double-headed dildo, another dildo that was huge, and a bunch of little metal clamps and rings, plus the stuff he'd already had set aside when I came in. She started ringing it up. "If you spend more than a hundred bucks, you get a complimentary copy of _Swing_Set_, the local magazine." Gil spent almost four hundred bucks. She threw in a box of nudie playing cards, too. Gil fished them out and looked at them, then chuckled and tossed them to me. "They're yours if you want them, Paul." He paid cash and then asked her, "Where does the serious bondage trade go?" "Bound for Glory," she said. "It's a leather shop up in the north end. They do a lot of custom work." "Thanks," he said. "You buying or just looking?" she said to me. I went outside with Gil. "You move quickly," I told him. I kind of hoped he'd talk about it because I wanted to talk about Kim with somebody and I couldn't talk to anyone in the office. "Just lucky, I guess," he said. He seemed kind of embarrassed. "Client?" I asked him. I know I was being nosy, but I wanted him to talk about it. If he talked, then I could talk to him about Kim. He was the only person I could think of that I could tell, since I couldn't tell anyone in the office. "No," he said. "I don't do my clients." "Oh," I said. There was a diner across the street; I said, "Look, you want a coffee?" He sized me up, then said, "Sure," and put the bags in the trunk of his car. It was a little hole-in-the-wall place, open five to five for the factory crowd. The Formica on the counter and table-tops was peeling. You wouldn't be able to sell them on building improvements unless the health inspector was on their ass. Gil ordered us both coffees. He remembered what I take in mine --- one sugar, two cream --- which I always think is a very salesman thing to do. "Look," I said again. "About last Friday---" I shook my head. "I hope I didn't say anything...stupid." "You were fine," he told me. "I had a nice chat with your wife and then a cab took me back to my car." "Oh, you met Kim?" He laughed. "She's nice." "Yeah." "You're a lucky guy." "I guess," I said. "Who's this woman you've got?" "I can't say," he told me. "Come on." He shrugged. "She's married. I can't say anything." I was shocked and offended. I mean, I know I go and _look_ at naked women in the strip bar, but I wouldn't dream of _sleeping_ with another woman. I had to look at Gil in a whole new light. "You're sleeping with a married woman?" He tried to joke it off: "You do." "Yeah, but I'm the one who married her." "That's true," he said. "I certainly didn't marry her." "That's... Jesus, I can't imagine it." "Sorry," he said. "Uh," I said. Suddenly I didn't want to spend time with Gil, but I'd gone after him. "Uh, yeah." "So it's wrong to sleep with a married woman," he said to me. "Yeah," I said. "Of course it is. It's like...buying stolen goods. Even though you didn't steal it, you're part of something wrong." "What if she has an open marriage?" "Well..." I leaned forward. "I've never known anybody with an open marriage. Do they really work?" He shrugged again. "Some do, some don't. The first one I ever knew, they loved each other very much but he was gay and she was definitely hetero. They wanted to spend their lives together but sex just didn't work." "Yeah, but they're not all like that." "No," he said, and nothing else. Like I said, if Gil doesn't approve, he lets you know. I respect that, but it can be uncomfortable. The silence got longer and eventually I said, "The point is, most married women made a vow." "A lot of married men stray, according to the surveys. Why shouldn't women?" "Because they don't." "Sure they do." I tried to imagine Kim having an affair. I tried to imagine Kim in bed with someone else. It made me...queasy. It made me mad. "Look," I said as if I were talking to one of the boys, "just because she wants to have an affair doesn't mean you have to be involved. It's like, as if she wanted to sell you stolen goods. If you buy them, you're part of that theft, even if you didn't take them off the truck." "That's a good analogy," he said. "Except it sounds like her husband owns her." I laughed and it sounded a bit shaky. "I feel like I'm arguing with Kim right now." "Three guys in a bar," he said to me. "The first guy says, 'I let another woman give me a blowjob, but I'm still faithful because I still love my wife.' Second guy says, 'I fucked another woman but I'm still faithful because it didn't mean anything to me, because I still love my wife.' Third guy says, 'I phoned another woman and told her things about myself that I'll never tell my wife. But I never touched her, so I'm still faithful.' Bartender says, 'You're all full of shit.'" "The third guy was okay," I told him. "They were all unfaithful," Gil told me.