How My Husband Won a Bet and Ruined My Dignity

This is one of those blog posts where I’m having trouble creating a coherent structure, because it starts with motherhood… and then swerves wildly into me being a bit of a deviant in my early twenties.

Bubs and I made a bet yesterday — and this is me losing.

The thing is, he claims he doesn’t even want to be “paid off,” but I’ll be damned if I let him hold an unpaid debt over my head for the rest of our lives together.

Dani M pays her bets.

The Bet

Ashley has had her first cold of her little life, which quickly turned into a sinus infection. She’s been miserable, and I spent all of last week glued to her — loving it, but by Saturday I desperately needed a break. I also felt guilty that I’d been neglecting the older two kids.

So Bubs and I worked it out: I’d take Abby and/or TJ out for most of the day, and he’d happily stay home with Ashley.

Sounds great in theory.

Except Abby and TJ woke up on Saturday morning with battle lines already drawn. By 8 a.m. they’d had three full-blown, out-for-blood fights.

Now — and this is important — if Bubs had simply kept his mouth shut, none of what follows would have happened.

As I was mapping out my plan for the day, he casually says,
“Hey sweetie… I don’t think you can handle both kids today. Why don’t you leave one of them here? You can make it up to the other one later.”

Excuse me?

Can’t handle… my own kids?

Wanna bet?

Now his competitive juices were flowing.

“Yes, Dani,” he said, “and admitting you can’t handle a soon-to-be ten-year-old and a soon-to-be eight-year-old who are intent on destruction isn’t a bad thing. But if you can take them shopping all day with no fights — I’ll give you whatever you want.”

Whatever I want?

“You know I’ve been eyeing that condo in South Austin,” I said. “The one I could Airbnb and use whenever we go home.”

“Yes,” he said, far too confidently. “I’m 100% sure that within ten minutes they’ll be at each other’s throats and you’ll be calling me to rescue you. I have no fear that we’ll actually buy a condo. But if I win, you have to blog about… the incident in Florida.”

“Deal,” I said. Fully confident.

Fighting Dirty (Parenting Edition)

I packed up Abby and TJ — and I did not fight fair.

“Hey kiddos,” I said sweetly, “Mom and Dad have a bet going. If I win, we’re going to buy a new house where we can visit your cousins all the time. But you absolutely cannot fight today.”

They agreed instantly.

For insurance, I bribed them with gelato.

We had an amazing day. Truly. A lot of it was do to my being able to step between them when things started to boil. We almost made it . But the tension started building as we got closer to home. I told them to look the other way, focus on their Nintendos, and go straight to their rooms when we arrived.

We were literally in the garage — almost home free — when TJ looks over at Abby and says:

“Hey Abby… gingers don’t have souls.”

For one: goddamn South Park for being part of the new Fortnite.
For two: seriously, TJ?

Abby unbuckled herself in a fury, ran smack into Bubs and Ashley at the door (Ashley’s little snotty nose was honestly adorable), and screamed, “I hate him! I can’t stand him!” before slamming her bedroom door.

Bubs looked at me like, So it’s been like that all day, huh?

I smugly replied, “Nope. That was the first outburst. And I think I win on a technicality. Were home.”

Never ask TJ to testify on your behalf.

“Yeah,” he added helpfully, “but Mom told us about the bet and bribed us with chicken tenders and ice cream.”

I think I hate Bubs’ satisfied, smug look almost as much as Ashley hates TJ for telling her she has no soul.

Bubs, very graciously, said, “Hey, no big deal. You did great. You don’t have to pay off the bet.”

It was the way he said “you did great.”

Absolutely not.

So here we are.

The Payoff (Happy Now, Bubs?)

Those years right after college and before kids were some of the funnest times Bubs and I ever had. We were married, employed, bills paid — and something about that freedom made me friskier than I’d ever been.

I wanted to do it all while we were young.

We were driving to visit my family, who were vacationing in Perdido Key, Florida. If you’ve made that drive enough times, you know that adult bookstores were (maybe still are?) illegal in Alabama — so right across the Florida border, there are these full-on porn shops.

Some are modern and well-lit. Others look like places where a body might be rotting in the bathroom.

We passed one, and I was feeling bold. I told Bubs to pull over so we could grab some “supplies” for the trip — lingerie, toys, the works.

The place was more or less abandoned save for a very bored-looking clerk. We bought the usual fun stuff and checked out, but I told Bubs I wanted to surprise him, so to wait for me in the car.

I went back and picked out a — well, let’s not gloss over this — a plug. We’d never tried it before, but the little jewel end was calling to me, and I figured for the last 45 minutes into Perdido I could tease him: Guess what I got? Guess where it is…

The expressionless clerk checked me out, and I asked if there was a bathroom. If he knew what I was planning, he didn’t care as he pointed me toward the back.

The way to the bathroom went through a hallway with many doors. I’d never been in one before, but realized this was one of those porn arcades. It reeked of bleach, and I noticed that there were little green lights above all the doors — all of them dark. I looked in one and it was still damp from being mopped, with a padded bench. I figured this had to be way more comfortable than the bathroom, so I went in and locked the door behind me.

The toy was housed in a plastic shell that apparently was not meant to be opened human hands. I grunted and groaned, cussed out loud, ripped and gnawed with my teeth until it finally gave way. I pulled down my surf shorts and underwear, getting ready to do what had to be done — feeling like I had the luckiest husband alive to be with such a fun wife.

As I glanced over, there was something I had not noticed before — a hole.

And behind that hole was a man.

To his absolute credit, he was backed away from the hole and did not look like he was trying to get my attention at all. In fact, he looked as scared as I did. I have no idea if he had been in there the entire time and the light above his stall didn’t work, or if he had come in while I was making all that noise with the packaging — but whatever it was, he was there now. He had to have heard everything, and probably saw at least my bare ass as I was getting ready to… well, you know.

I jumped up and leaned forward so hard to grab my shorts that I bumped my head on the TV in the tiny little room. I struggled to pull them I don't think I buttoned them. I ran out of there so fast that one of my flip-flops fell off. I made the decision to go back and get it, then ran right past the clerk, out the door, and into Bubs’ truck.

“Go, go, go!” I said, probably between tears.

“Dani, what happened?!”

In the many times we’ve retold this story, he said from his perspective I had a huge welt on my head, my shorts were in disarray, and I was telling him to get out of there. He wasn’t sure if I’d been assaulted or if I had tried to rob the place and the clerk fought back.

I sobbed in heaps for the next five minutes — “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God” — while Bubs was desperate for any info. “Dani, what in the hell? Do we need to call the sheriff? What happened to you? Are you okay? I’ll pull over right now!”

Slowly it started to come out what happened, and the first thing Bubs said when he realized I was probably an unwitting instigator and not the victim was, “You went into a glory hole booth?”

I was like, “What the hell is a glory hole?!”

He calmly explained it to me, and I was like, “People do that? Like for real? And how the hell do you know what a glory hole is?”

He explained that every 14-year-old boy in the world knows what a glory hole is, and no, people probably don’t really use them — which is why the man in the next booth looked as scared as I did. Either his greatest fantasy was coming true or he thought he was being set up by the cops.

I was horrified for the rest of the drive, and Bubs’ grin kept getting bigger and bigger. Yes, he was lucky to have a wife like me — but for the comedy, not the sexy risk-taking.

I’d hoped to find comfort in my sisters when we arrived at the family condo, but after assurances that I was okay… they too thought it was hilarious. I begged them not to tell Mom and Dad, but the amount of jokes that involved words like “plug,” “peep,” and “glory” probably set a record that week.

OK, Bubs — there you go. You can’t say I don’t pay off my bets.

But when I win the next one? I’m wiggling the keys to my new condo right in your face