Then I told Sandy while he was out on a smoke break, Y'knoooowwww, maybe we should stop giving him such a hard time, cause if there's ONE thing we all know about Ian: he would never cheat on Sandy..... because he would NEVER be able to pull it off without a cellphone. She laughed and said, "wait, I thought that's how everybody got caught cheating..." And I said, No, I had just read Cleaving for Book Club, and that's the one thing Julie Powell says -- that she would've never had her now-notorious affair had it not been for her BlackBerry -- not because she had such a faithful nature, or a great marriage, but just because the technology enabled it logistically in ways that wouldn't have been possible ten years ago. (Personally, I have had a BlackBerry for years, and if there's an App for that, I don't know what it is --- at least not beyond the standard Booty-Call-Waiting, which I only use for single people -- for Good and Not Evil.)
Of course -- we all know all about this -- because of my big "affair" with Ian a couple years ago. Being the Model Husband he is (the Husband by whom all other Husbands should be measured if you ask me), he was planning a Surprise Dinner Party for Sandy -- a Surprise Party that required intense cooperation and secrecy among six of her closest girlfriends. He coordinated the entire Menu; assigned each of us a course; and got us all out to the middle of the country on a Tuesday night.
But I can't believe she didn't know.... because he kept borrowing her cell phone: first, to find our numbers... and then to call us with food details and logistics (the final details were all ironed out with one big email the day before). Since he doesn't own a cellphone, it obviously never occurred to him to do anything like clear out the call log or anything like that.
And I think it's a testament to their marriage that instead of getting remotely suspicious, she would just innocently wonder aloud, "huh... I didn't think I called Megan today... Oh well. I guess maybe I did." If that had been me, I imagine I would've thought he was trying to gaslight me. I'm not in the actual habit of always thinking anybody's cheating on me (most guys wanna live) -- but that much sketchy phone behavior would've at least made me arch an eyebrow.
By the time we got to dinner that night (where he quietly faded into the kitchen and served and cleaned and poured drinks and basically was our Bitch for an all-girls' evening), I had been on pins and needles for a week about spoiling the surprise. When Sandy laughed about how we'd kept it all such a big secret, I told her flat-out if she had quizzed me one bit about all those mystery phone calls, I was thoroughly prepared to blurt out that I was having an affair with Ian. And so was Megan. And so were all the other women there that night. I had a pretty good story prepped about his "harem," in fact.
Because birthdays are sacred. And surprise birthday parties, even moreso.
I do still kinda wish he'd get a damn phone already and take a little of the pressure off the rest of us though.
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