In Defense of Jess Mapplethorpe

Let me spin a little tale for the Jess-haters (there's a lot!) out there, a contextual allegory. I do it to maybe inspire some compassion for this poor woman...

You're a dude. Your wife comes to you and says, quite embarrassedly, that she would enjoy watching you make love to another woman. You reject it, doesn't feel right to you. She persists and eventually it feels like it might become a reality. You get close a few times but you feel too guilty to commit. You enjoy turning your wife on saying dirty things to her, seeing her react. Turns you on too. She starts relating to you how worthless she is as a lover, she gets off on it, but it starts to seep into your understanding of her.

Anyway to speed things up here, there's a new co-worker starts in your office. She's twenty-five and an absolute fucking smokeshow. Know what I mean? Pick whatever dream babe you want. Get this though. You start to think she might be a little into you. Know how amazing that would feel? And hey, your wife would want you to. Next thing you know you're doing it in the lunch room and its the best sex ever. By far.

But really picture that. You do the dirtiest things to her, her to you, and your wife watches. She's amazing, and beautiful, and you feel like she's into you. At some point your body produces love chemicals that tell you to make babies, fall in love and reproduce. Those chemicals tell your rational mind to fuck right off. You can't be without her. Your wife is worthless, remember? She tells you that all the time. She wants you to fuck this little lingerie model. Do it, man. Uh-oh she's in trouble. Needs a place to stay. That paternal, avuncular side kicks in. You don't want her to suffer. Any way you see where I'm going.

The things Jess did are very rational things a woman would do in that situation. We're all victims of hormones. Our brains struggle to make sense of it all and work it out in our dumb ape language. Our morals, our slave morality, our sense of right and wrong, ideas of love and fairytale weddings, they're all just concepts that help us make sense out of it all. But we're also organic sacks that like to feel pleasure, like to make more of ourselves. the hormones in our body are there because they work. They make us make more of us. You can be a moral person but sometimes fighting science and biology can be too hard. Especially when all the elements fall into place.

Cuckolding and hotwifing is dangerous. Awesome and arousing but dangerous. You better keep your head on a swivel because it's the fucking NFL out there and someone could run into you at 60mph when you're looking down. I like different hotwife stories. My favourite are the solid couples who have it all figured out. An almost sociopathic duo that operate as one practically. A rock solid couple you know will never break up. Pete and Jess weren't that couple. I didn't know how dark i was going to go initially. It broke my heart. It was hard to write, really. I made Jess so wonderful I hated to let her get consumed like that. She had fun but...

It tickled me in ways that thinking of cuckolding never had before. Goldarnit, when Pete watched Tyler with his wife and boys coming home from the water park? Man, when Pete came home and heard them upstairs. Specifically when he heard Tyler through the door say, Uh-oh someones in trouble, and Jess giggled and said, Someone's been a bad girl and got back into bed with him. Wow, I don't know about you but those were harsh. Tickled that same part of the brain that is tickled by sexual cuckolding but it wasn't necessarily sexual. It hurt better in some ways. Oh, like when Tyler knew a story about Jess (Jessica Garrett/Jessica Rabbit) that Pete didn't know.

Netorare seems like it's less sexual and more emotional and it was something to write. Painful to write. Typically netorare likes to go really far and bizarre (for my dull English tastes) and end in true destruction. Murder or suicide. But I couldn't do that. At least not with this couple, haha.

All in all. I get the Jess hatred . It's cool. But I feel like she's a part of me and I don't think what she did was entirely wrong. If Tyler had been all that she wanted him to be she would have stayed with him. Pete and Jess would be just another divorced couple. Jess saw a lot in Tyler that she wanted to see, but it wasn't really there. The last book was a book about context. Get everyone out of that dark little house and see themselves in the real world up against real people. Jess saw herself now as a silly older woman (she wasn't, it's just now how she saw herself) who thought she was in love with a young boy. Tyler wasn't what she thought. She, in her fantasies always saw him as a dad. In the driver seat of her minivan, acting like the father of their children. Basically being Pete. In Florida she saw him as he was. A twenty-five year old guy. Going to clubs, looking good, having fun, fighting, stealing a train for her boys because that's what he thinks being a good dad would entail. She didn't like him when he wasn't in her house in Ohio, leading a life like what she was used to. She wanted him to lead her lifestyle. In Florida she got to live his lifestyle. That was the writing on the wall for her. That's why she cried on the beach after she made love. that's why she told him to stop and stand so she could admire him against the starlight sky. She knew it would probably be the last time they were together. She didn't want to live a life like Pete had, wondering if he was fucking some pretty Taylor he met at a club. In Florida she knew they couldn't be. It wasn't their age difference. it was far more complicated than that. And she cried because she knew that she loved him, and she also knew that he loved her for real. But it would never be.

Pete's context was being on the outside looking in. It removed that cuckold brain tickle that allowed him to permit Jess' bad behaviour. It made him hard. But it wasn't any fun when it was over. It removed the fugue he was in. Made it possible for him do what he needed to do.