Well it is 2006 now and I have been a prisoner of California for almost 6 years now.  I finally got off probation last August 1^st but I am still here because with a felony on your record it is all but impossible to get a job. 

            I have delayed writing in my book now for some time for several reasons the next few chapters are going to be the hardest to write and will tell the meat of what most of you want to know.  How did an Army Major that served at the highest levels of government ever get into this mess.  I know most of you that know me the best are really waiting to read these next few chapters.  I have to tell you they are very humiliating to me for several reasons.  I would have never thought that I would ever have been taken in so much by Susan after being married to her for so long.  It’s very hard to admit I was so gullible with her and so many others as well.  It’s not just my home life that was falling apart my life at work was going down hill just as fast.  I was once a proud man who thought I had everything to make me happy, I thought I was happily married and I thought I had obtained my goals professionally when I was working a the White House.  The problem is I was only 38 when I retired and for most people even in their 60 they never reach a single goal so my guess is now they were jealous of me and could never understand in a million years why I retired when I did and went to work for what was then a small company in North Idaho. 

            It was still 1997 in the spring of that year I was given a trip to Maui by the company I was working with like many others in management there.  It was to be 2 first class tickets with a beach front condo in a very nice resort with a free rental car.  Susan however not wanting to travel alone with me any more decided that we should trade in the first class air fare and the beach front condo for coach and a pool side condo so we could take the children.  After all she had not even vacationed with us for years with out taking one or more of her friends with her so she would have some one to talk with and so she would not have to be alone with me. 

            Susan was convinced in her own mind that I was obsessed with sex but nothing could be further from the truth I was obsessed with the lack of sex and emotional attention is closer to the facts.  I have read many stories in the past 6 years now where men have sued their wife’s for refusing to have sex with them for 5 days in a row.  My God I could go 5 days in a row on my head with Susan; they should try 6 months in a row like I was forced to many times during our marriage.  I finally came to the conclusion that I was nothing more than a sperm donor and a pay check for Susan but that took a few years after our divorce to finally realize that completely.    

            While we were in Maui Susan and I had a master bedroom in the suite we had but do you think Susan would sleep any where close to me in that time?  She would sleep on the far side of the bed every single night even though we were in Maui for the first time ever.  By now I was also playing along with Susan.  The more she rejected me and pushed me away the more I ignored her.  If for no other reason than self preservation, because I could not stand to get close to her and end up desiring her only to be rejected and left alone.  When she would go out every day with the kids I would stay in the room and be alone.  It was better than going out with her knowing I could not have her.  I am not sure if anyone can really understand that because I am not sure anyone would have tolerated what she did to me much less as long as I did. It was impossible any more for me to get close to her and not be able to have her in my arms.   I had suspected for a very long time she was seeing another man or several other men because no one could go as long as she could with out sex.  Her mother use to tell me over and over again that she must be seeing another man, if it were her she would be climbing the walls to go as long as I would tell her.  I guess by now I was feeding the fire as well but after so many years nearly 20 by now it was harder and harder to be with Susan only to be rejected by her time after time. 

            Soon after we got back from Maui things at work were going from bad to worse as well and nothing would get better now either at home or at work for the remainder of the time I was with Susan or at this job in north Idaho. 

             That summer I was relieved of my job managing the desktop and network and they hired another man.  I know what must have gone on when they hired him.  The man I worked for hated me because of the way things had gone the year before during a simple cut over of the telephone switch.  My boss had told me that the owner of the company we worked for thought of me as the messiah and my boss told me he hated messiahs and would do his best to ruin me.  He did a pretty good job, forcing me to do things his way then blaming me when they’d go wrong.  He would never take a single recommendation I gave on how to do things.  Between him and his boss they did their best to make me look bad.  I don’t want to sound bitter here because it won’t help me to sound that way.  Facts however are facts.   

            That year we were trying to find a new location for a call center and distribution center. The owner entrusted me with a great deal of the responsibility to help find a new location based on my experience with disaster planning.  The owner trusted me and I trusted him.  The problem is the more he entrusted with me the more my boss and others got mad at me, making my every day life a living hell while I was there. 

            It was also this year that Susan started to work part time finally.  Not to help with the family expenses mind you but so she could help pay for the dance classes and the other activities she had the girls in by now.  She had all but ignored Shawn now for the past 4 years and she was spending just over $600.00 a month on dance lessons alone, that does not include costumes and expenses of driving all over the place for them or $60.00 ballet shoes for both girls every 3 months.  In all she was spending well over $1,000 a month on all this.  Of course I was not making that kind of money and she was going deeper and deeper in debt now to pay for these things even with her work. 

            She loved her job because she got to play. All the years she would fight with me about my jobs and how I must love them more than my family to be there so much she believed people only worked when they had fun.  I had fun at work the best I could because there was nothing else I could do.  However if you think it was fun to work 18 hour days 6 to 7 days a week while I was on the road in the army you are mistaken. I had no choice but to work to raise a family and pay the expenses as the only income in the family.   

            It was this summer that Susan first started to bring up the idea of getting a divorce so that in the event something happened to me she would get more money from the Army than she would if we were married.   Like I said I was naïve the signs had been there for years but I refused to believe them or see them I was still in love with her.  I hope those of you reading this won’t ask me a stupid question as to why I was in love.  I don’t know I really don’t believe anyone knows why another person loves another one when it is real love.  Oh sure you can point out that a woman must love a man that takes care of her so well and provides for her and such but true love sometimes has no rhyme or reason to it.  I have to believe that as well when I know about the love of God now.  If He had to have a reason to love me there is no reason at all to love me either.  It is just simple He loves me and I loved Susan in spite of all our problems I wanted nothing more from her than her love in return but I was so far down on her priority list I doubt I was in her top 20 things she desired to be with.  

            Her cats came first, then the dance studio then her fun then the kids and after than there were her friends, family, job etc… 

            Susan was washing clothes now maybe every 5-8 weeks.   She would not wash anything until there was nothing else to wear.  Along with cleaning the house she would not clean dishes or the house until she could no longer walk or find a clean dish to eat on.  Not that she cooked very often anymore she usually bought fast food.  She would not go to the store to buy food I gave her 90% of my income to pay bills and buy food for the family but she wanted to have fun.  It was during this year that she also first started talking about running away either by herself or with Sara our youngest since she believed neither I, or our other two children loved her.  She was turning more and more into a teenager again.   

            In order for me to have clean socks, t-shirts, underwear, and a clean towel at least once a week I resulted in buying a weeks supply at a time.  She would have me use the same towel for a month before I was allowed to have cleaned one.  In the meantime her and our kids could use two to three towels a day.  I would buy my clothes and towels and hide them in my Army foot locker.   I had to wear a clean underwear, t-shirts and socks every day sorry if that sounds excessive to some of you but that is just the way I am.  I could not use the same towel more than for a week at a time I showered every day as well.  There were times when she was gone on Sundays I would take my clothes to the launder mat to wash them. I could not get to our washer and dryer any longer the washing room was chest high always with dirty clothes from every one else. 

 Along with the things at home going down the toilet things at work were going just as fast.  I was not a technical expert in anything except managing projects and people.  I was able to hire one guy that I use to work with from the White House to work all the telephone issues at two sites more than 50 miles apart but it was killing him as well trying to keep up with the work load of what should have been 3 people working 40 hour weeks. To us it was just like being in the Army again deployed on a presidential trip site we worked around the clock with out breaks for weeks at a time. 

            By the end of the year I was finally allowed to hire another telephone technician to work the site where I was at and let the other guy stay closer to home.  Also now the owner of the company had finally fired my boss or rather gave him another job at the new site out of state.  He told me he knew how bad it was for me working for such a guy but rest assured he appreciated me hanging in there with him in spite of it all. I don’t think he really ever knew how bad it was; the closer he got to me the worse many people made it for me as the bosses step child.  The guy he hired to replace him turned out to be far worse than my old boss could ever dream of being in the long run. 

            During the Super Bowl of 1998 our main call center went down due to a massive failure in an Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS).  It was a used system that was 10 years old when we bought it in 1996.  I had strongly recommended against buying it in favor of a brand new system that was in reality less than a $1,000 dollars more than the old one.   My boss over road my recommendation laughing actually when it arrived and worked at how he was right and I was wrong and he saved the company all that money.   

            Well let me tell you working in a catalog company where over 99% of the money is made on the telephone it is not wise to cut corners. As soon as the kick off of the Super Bowl happened I started to get calls about a power failure at the site from the site and from the company that we bought the UPS from and paid to monitor it for us.  I called the technician in the area and had him report in to give me a first hand report on what was going on.  I also started trying to reach my new boss along with any other senior director, VP, and the owner of the company.  Wouldn’t you know it they all were gone and not a one of them had their pagers on.  By now I was on my way to the location some 50 miles away along with my maintenance manager and our electrician.  I had also requested that the company we bought the UPS from send over their technician from Seattle on the first flight out.   By 7 PM that night we were all on site but I had still been unable to reach a single executive in the company.  It was hopeless for the UPS it had fried beyond repair.  I had to get a hold of other managers to get them in gear to move people to our headquarters to take orders the next day.  You see we had a major catalog that was hitting the mail boxes that next day and we would need all the phone operators we had in order to handle the load.   

            By the time I got a hold of a VP I also got a hold of the owner and briefed them all on what was going on and what I had planned for the next day.  I stayed on site and worked around the clock until 4 PM the next day.  When I returned to my normal work location I over heard my old boss running around bragging about how the failure didn’t happen on his watch and how he recommended that we not buy that used UPS in the first place.  After some 26 hours on the job on what should have been my day off I was furious and I pulled out all my old paperwork, emails and notes from the time my old boss decided to buy that UPS.  There was no way I was going to take the blame for that mess or let my new boss take it either.   However as you can imagine no one likes a tattletale so it still didn’t do me any good. 

            With in the week I had a new UPS on site with current technology and hooked up.  We managed to keep the company up and running with out a hitch as far as the customers were concerned but I made a lot of enemies that week in doing so with my peers.   

            This was the year things at home really started going even further south.  In March I got a call from my dad that he was dying he had a heart problem and they didn’t know how long he had to live but less than 6 months at best.   My son was going to graduate from high school that year as well. 

            I managed to get down to see my dad a couple of times in conjunction with some business trips for the company while he was not too bad off.  I was shocked to see him the first time because my dad had always been well over 250 to 300 lbs but when I saw him he weighed only about 160 lbs and could not walk any longer by himself.  I knew he was dying for sure.  Susan could care less and would never travel with me or even care to listen to me how I felt about it.  She had hated my dad for some time and started to say I was just like him for year and that I would leave her and the children when Shawn was 11 just like my dad had us when I was 11 years old.  Nothing could have been further from the truth, but for anyone that ever knew Susan you would know that once she made her mind up on something no matter how far it was from fact it was true to her and that was just the way it was.  

            For my son’s graduation I planned a 2 week family vacation to California to see my dad one last time in June I knew he had only a few more weeks to live and I wanted to see him and I wanted him to see my kids and my kids to see him as well.  Susan was not happy about this at all and would be very mad about wasting our vacation to visit a dying man.  The first time we went to see my dad things were very bad and they got worse.  He was so distraught and in so much pain now that he talked about killing himself with tears in his eyes.  He was very upset about his life and the way things had turned out.  He actually picked up a loaded pistol in from of me and my family and held it to his head crying he wished God would pull the trigger and put him out of his pain. Needless to say this was not something I wanted to see or my kids to see at all.  Susan was very pissed off about this, not only were we wasting valuable beach time with a dying man she hated our kids had to be subjected to that sort of scene.   

            I was not happy about it but I guess I had a little more compassion for the pain he was in.  We went about our vacation time in California going to Disneyland, Universal Studios, and the beach every day.  I managed to get one more hour with my dad even though Susan was quite pissed off about it I went, Susan went and so did Sara.  The other kids stayed with my brother that morning until we came back to get them to go to the beach.  On the way there Susan started in on me about how we wasted the time seeing my dad and that was the way the vacation was going to be I should have rented them a car so they could go to the beach and enjoy themselves.   I got very angry at this and pulled the car we were in very abruptly and cussed up a storm at how selfish they all were and did not care at all that my father was dying and I would never see him again just to take them to the beach.  I don’t remember ever being so angry before or saying such things to them as I did that day.   

            We left California and went to Las Vegas to visit Susan sister there.  She was not at all upset about visiting her healthy sister and her family and the fun she had in Las Vegas but still stewing about the 3 hours wasted the previous week with my dying father.  

            We took another week to finish our trip through the national parks in southern Utah and went on home with out any other incidents. 

            When the 4^th of July came along we had Susan’s whole family over to our house for the weekend her 3 brothers and their family’s as well as her sister and her family.  We did have a good time the 4^th of July in Sandpoint was quite fun for people that never saw a small town 4^th of July celebration before.   That weekend went quite well with every one there. I got a long very well with her whole family. 

            The very next week things got real bad however.  On the 8^th of July I got a call from my step mother that my father had just killed himself.  I was on the phone with her for a  couple of hours while I let her talk and to call my sister and brother to let them know our dad had died and how. 

            Susan came home just as I was finishing talking to my sister and Susan was cussing up a storm about who had been on the phone the past two hours and where Angela was.  I guess Angela was suppose to call her and since she didn’t and she couldn’t get through the phone at home Susan was fit to be tied.  I told her fist off I had been on the phone and to leave Sara and Shawn alone and the reason I had been on so long was my dad just died and my step mother was talking to me.  The next words out of Susan’s mouth I still can’t believe to this day how cold and heartless they were.  Susan said to me as soon as I told her my dad had just died “Don’t expect me to feel guilty”  and that was all she said and left our room never to say another word about it or him again.  I was now not only devastated at the loss of my father but it was even worse because it was obvious my wife of some 19 years could care less how I felt about my father dying.  I never told Susan or my kids about how he died since no one had the slightest interest in it at all.  I did tell Susan a year later when we met with a counselor about Angela I was telling the counselor and Susan looked at me and got mad that I never told her how he died.  I told her I never told you because you made it perfectly clear you did not want to know anything about him dying or how I felt so I didn’t tell you. 

            By the end of the summer of 1998 I had to cancel Susan’s American express card.   You see that was the only credit card I paid each month and it had to be paid in full each month.   I used it primarily for emergencies and for my work expenses since I would be reimbursed for them with in days of my expenses.  However Susan had started to charge her gas to her   American Express card and she was spending some $400-$500 a month on gas.  Now by today’s prices that may not seem like much but keep in mind then her gas cost $1.09 a gallon and we lived in a town of only 5000 people for her to go through 100 gallons of gas a week with a car that got over 26 miles to a gallon was pretty fishing to say the least.   This is the time that for the first time in 19 years of being married Susan was painting her fingernails and on top of that her toe nails as well.  She was painting them a couple of times a week now and dying her hair twice a month.  I had begged since we were first married to paint her nails for me at least once but she never would but now it was routine.   She wanted to look good for work.   

            It was also this summer about the last time I saw her nude I noticed she had been bitten on her nipple.  I was quite shocked since I had never bit her ever or any other woman in my life.  She tried to tell me it was done by one of the younger girls she was watching at work that was autistic, but if you know Susan her breasts are not very large and you’d have to admit that the little girl had a good aim to be absolutely zeroed in on her nipple with the bite mark, not to mention the size of the bite mark was quite a bit larger than that of a 7 year old girl. 

            I was finally coming to the awful truth, Susan was in fact cheating on me and not only that but wasting the money I made to do it with.  I gave her 90% of the income I made and it was all going now for her pleasure and her boy friend or boy friends and girl friends.   

            It’s very hard for me to admit that I was taken in by her all those years and simply used by her it in many ways is more humiliating than the false felony charges I received.  I could not publicly speak of this until now.  I am so ashamed at what an idiot I had to be.  Not only had my friends for years been trying to tell me, my mother and Susan’s mother for years had been trying to tell me she was up to something no good. I simply refused to believe them and held fast in my belief that a man should belief his wife above everything else no matter what.

Everything in my life now was spinning out of control so fast I couldn’t keep up.   From the time I got to Idaho till now nothing seemed to be going right or even slightly good.   My whole family was mad at me for moving them from Maryland again and this time on my own and not due to the Army moving us.  Susan was so mad by the time she left there she all but destroyed any chance of a decent price for the house we owned there.  She joined me in Idaho if you recall in August of 1996 she hired a fly by night real estate agent that rented the house to very young people that on top of the damage Susan had done they all but destroyed it.   By August of 1997 the house still had not sold, the company I was working for was still making the monthly payments for me but that was only making things worse for me inside since I was not able to keep up on my own.  

            That summer I hired a new agent that took the effort to get the place cleaned up for me, cleaning the pool alone cost me $4,000 because of all the crap that had been thrown in it.  Susan told me while she was still in Sacramento that she had to have a pool if she was going to move to the DC area.  The only home I could afford with a pool was nearly 50 miles outside of DC.  After only 2 years she stopped taking care of the pool along with every thing else.  Like I had said it was around April of 1992 it was if a switch was turned off inside of her and she stopped taking care of anything except making sure the girls were in as many dance classes as she could sign them up for.

             The house in Maryland finally sold in late 1997 about the time I was ready to move back to it even with out a job.  However we lost over $30,000 on it when it sold it was the only offer we had received on it since it went on the market in the early summer of 1996.  That only added to my feeling of slavery as it were to the company I worked for since they covered the loss with the caveat that I would pay them back annually with my bonus checks. 

             Back to the summer of 1998 now, on Memorial Day I finally got a 4 wheel drive truck and traded in my old 2 wheel drive truck that had over 170,000 miles on it and that I drove since it was new in December of 1990.   Susan was mad at me for not giving the old truck to our son.  To make matters worse I was tired of looking at a destroyed motor home in the drive along with a destroyed boat that not one person in the family ever helped me try to fix up.  The motor home was ruined actually for me on the trip from Sacramento to Maryland back in 1990 when Susan placed her cat in the shower and the cat box as well.  The kitty litter was pushed out of the box several times by the cat and into the drain.  I did not find that out actually until the next year when we finally went camping in it again.  The drain was plugged just like someone had poured concrete in it.  There was no way for me to clean it and I could not even begin to afford to take it in to be cleaned out.  So from that point on the shower could not be used with out flooding the motor home.  It was one of the main reasons I rarely used in again except to go to camp grounds with showers installed it was no good any longer for my preferred way of camping in remote areas. 

            On the trip from Maryland to Idaho all the animals used it now as their transportation including a rat, several cats and 2 dogs.   When we finally moved into our home in Idaho it was parked and Susan was suppose to clean it out since it was so trashed while I was alone in Idaho and since we had gotten there.  She left everything as it was and by spring it was a total loss inside with mold and rotten food and animal wastes.  

            At any rate I was tired of looking at it and the feeling of hopelessness it added to me so I sold it along with the boat that summer.  I paid in total around $28,000 for the motor home and $1,800 for the boat but in the condition they were in I was lucky to get $1,200 for the both of them combined.  Susan was furious about selling them she had planned that I would give them both to Shawn as well.  She never once in the 10 years we owned the motor home lifted a single finger to help me keep it clean.  When we took family vacations it really was her vacation (from what I don’t know since she had all but stopped doing any house work at all) I did 99% of the cooking and 100% of the cleaning on our vacations so for me it was leaving my army job for two weeks at a time and doing all the house work for her so she could play full time with the kids.  I simply could not stand to live like she wanted to live in filth all the time. 

            By this time I had also stopped doing anything around the house at all except doing all the snow removal in the winter.  Since Susan was not doing any house work any longer and I was still the sole provider for the household I figured working 10 -12 hour days 6 days a week was all I was going to do.  Sex between us was down to about 6 times a year now as well.  I know now I should have divorced her years ago.  Even her own mother by now was so shocked that I was still around she would tell me every time she saw me how proud she was that I was sticking it out and how ashamed she was of Susan and what she was doing to our home.   

            Susan now was working part time taking disabled children and adults out on outings.  She would be gone between the dance studio and her “work” all the time including weekends.  I know Susan well enough that since I was home every night now and home much more than when I was in the Army she was trying to pay me back for all the hours I put in the Army working.  However as most of you can understand the difference I was working and providing for 100% of the needs of 5 people I was not out at the bars getting drunk or going into town dancing with my friends I was working.  Susan however if not at work was out parting with her friends like she was back in college again.   She would go out after work during the week coming home between 10 PM and 2 AM.  She would tell me about all the fun she was having.  I tried to go out with her a few times but she preferred the only bar in town where the 21-25 year olds hung out along with her divorced girl friends that were all in their 40’s they like the younger boys there.   She’d even come tell me about the dancing and invites to go hot tubing with the boys.  She would take off her wedding ring during these outings so she would fit in with her friends and could get more offers to dance.   I don’t know if you remember from when I first met her or not but she was still wearing her old wedding ring from her first marriage telling me she wore it so the men would leave her alone.  That was her explanation to me when I told her I was not interested because she was married.  Along with everything else that was going on from the painting of her nails to the teeth marks on her nipple how was I suppose to feel about her taking off her wedding ring?   

            In the summer of 98 the guy we hired to take over the personal computers and network had quit and moved back to Seattle he had been fed up there in the company and finally got his escape and no one was going to talk him out of it.  He was a good manager and a good technician.  By the end of the summer we hired a new guy for that position and along with the VP of the IT department things were going downhill now fast.   

            It was hard enough working there with my managers that were nearly 10 years behind in technology than I was after working at the White House, but to have him come in with a personal computer background and a new MBA it just got worse.  

            I had hired two telephone system technicians that together worked very well on all our systems.  They were good technicians but they were technicians capable of doing what ever was required of them but the requirements still had to be given to them to do.  I knew the capabilities of the system and how best to use it for this company but as a manager I was not a technician.  As I got the requirements and understood the systems I would tell them what needed to be done and when.   I always gave them full credit for the work thinking I guess like I was still back in the Army the men get the credit for the work and I would be given the credit for the thinking end.  However not in this case the more credit I gave them the more too many people didn’t understand what my job was now.   It was hard enough that many of the other senior VPs in the company valued my input along with the owner / CEO of the company now it was real hard because the man I worked closest with and my own VP started to really get mad at me for the relationship I had with the owner and other executives.   

            Since I spent most of my Army career in command positions the best way to explain it I was better trained as a CEO / administrator than I was a technician.  With hundreds of people working for me in every conceivable field from police to doctors and electronic technicians my job was simply thinking and deploying the required resources to fit the mission we were given.  I had a great deal of experience in this and the CEO saw it and valued that.  The others I guess were jealous as I look back and would do anything in their power to discredit me including forcing me to do exactly as they said then blaming me when it would fail for not telling them clear enough in the first place it was  a bad idea. 

            I learned the terms of “Pants on Fire” from the VP of the IT department he told me he rarely listened to anyone who’s “pants were not on fire” and I responded that after 20 years in the Army and being responsible for ensuring that the President of the United States had communications in any situation it was impossible for me to have my pants of fire about selling dresses.  I would tell them as plain as I could what I though of their plans then be accused by them of not being a team player or simply not knowing what I was talking about  then given the blame because it didn’t work just like I said.  They would always revert to my original plans anyway and that would make them even madder at me.  The next term I learned was from the CFO he like the term “Squeal like a pig”  when he didn’t know anything about a subject at all his first response was cut every request / idea by 50% until the person with the plan started to squeal like a pig about how it would no longer work.  Both of those were hard for me to take since I had pretty much run of the show in my Army commands.  I certainly did not make my officers or men come to me with their pants of fire or squealing like pigs when I was about to do something stupid.  I gave my men the credit they earned by the experience they had over me in their fields of expertise exactly as I have been given my whole time in the Army including from two different Presidents.   Never did I have to act like a fool to convince anyone I worked with that I may have a better idea or more experience.  I could never adapt to this and it was making things worse.  

            I know I will never be able to remember all the details of the things that were spinning out of control now but I do want to convey that things were not normal at least what I would like to call normal. I hope to God those of you that read this would not classify these events as normal or acceptable because if you do I feel sorry for the life you have had to live so far.   In the Army every one outside of basic training was treated like adults and their expertise in their field was highly valued regardless of rank. I think that is the way it should be like any other good working / team environment.           

            Now at the end of 1998 things at work could not be worse by now they had place the new guy we hired to run the personal computers as the director over me.  He had taken what I had been recommending for the past two years about multiplexing all our data and telephone circuits and put it in place.  I had been working with that technology since 1990 however not one of the other people in management where I worked had even heard of it.  As I tried to explain it and even did one plan after another for the VP exactly as he asked he would never buy it until this guy came along and I told him how we could save so much money and operate so much more efficient if we’d only do this.  He not only got all the credit for the work but all the credit as well for the idea in the first place.    

            As soon as he got the directors job he started talking in private with my telephone technician.   I don’t mean casually but for an hour or more each day they would go into a private room and talk.  In a couple of months I was all but relieved of my management job in telecommunications. And they put the technician in charge of the systems.   I was more or less a consultant because they knew I understood more about the business requirements in the technology department than they did but this way they could keep all the credit. 

            During the early parts of my arrival in Idaho I was approached by the fire department and sheriffs department to help get our company to sponsor a 911 emergency system for our county.  Like many rural counties across the nation there was no 911 system in the county.  The owner of the company knowing my background in emergency communications had put me in charge of this for the company and how we could help and donate funds as required as well.  We met very month at our company with all the local police departments in the county, the fire departments full time and volunteers, the medial first responders, the hospital and the sheriff’s department since they would run the new 911 system.   

            As the years followed I gravitated more and more to support of all these organizations in the county.  It was mutual for the company and for the organizations and I was working with people that valued my experience and my connection with the largest employer in north Idaho.  I joined the Search and Rescue Unit in the County and spent nearly 12 hours a week with the sheriff’s department working on various issues together.  Our company even sponsored and hosted a county wide emergency drill the first of its kind in the county in over 10 years.   I had a very good working and personal relationship with all the county emergency personnel. 

            As time went on I was able to donate space from the company in exchange for free training for many of our company employees in first aid and CPR along with other emergency training from FEMA, the state government and county.   We could have free training for allowing our office spaces to be used as class rooms for county personnel.   

            Anyone that ever worked for me, know my passion and expertise in emergency planning and being prepared for a disaster.  It was not just a job to me but something I believe in very strongly.  To this day I still donate my time and expertise to many organizations to help them prepare for a disaster.

            It wasn’t long after I was taken off the Telecommunications job that the CEO approached me and wanted me to be the Safety and Security manager for the company including his personal security for himself and his family including all their personal property.   This outraged my new director and my VP because they were not consulted.  They took me into the VP’s office and told me point blank they did not approve of it and would have not recommended it and they would not support any new money since I should have the time and expertise to do this new job anyway at my current rate of pay.  It was only a few hours later that the CEO came to me again and said he was working with the board of directors to give me a raise to do this new job for him.   A couple days later he said they approved an $8,000 a year bump in my salary for the new responsibilities I had.   Things now were just getting worse with my VP and my new director since the CEO not only gave me a new job with out their input but he also gave me a pretty decent raise after they told me in no uncertain terms it would never happen during their watch.  I guess I should have gone directly to the CEO and told him about the tension that was created in that department but I was never much of a tattletale and figured I could work it out.  However with the spinning out of my personal life on top of my professional life I was wrong.  I should have quit the job and divorced Susan right then and there.  I was never good at defending my self contrary to the popular believe that everyone is best at defending themselves.  My life in the Army was spent defending my soldiers and my commanders in turn took care of me no one had to stand up for themselves in the Army that was your commander’s job. 

            Now it was 1999 and of course everyone was worried about Y2K.  My VP gave me the company Y2K project to manage for the company now.  It was not bad and in a couple of months all but one of his own departments was completed.  The problem is this department was the applications department the most serious cause for Y2K concerns in the company.  The manager in that department refused to work with me at any time from the regularly scheduled company wide meetings to offering to work any day or hour of the week to get her progress and input on the project.  This went on and on through the summer of 1999. I would leave 2- 3 voice mails a week with my VP and director along with several emails each week of her not providing any input to the project and the vulnerability of her department in particular.  The rest of the company was at 100% accomplished in their departments and input from their vendors.   All my VP would tell me as that I had to do her plan since she did not have the time.  I told him she was not supporting me with her personnel or their time at all and I had no way to read the thousands of lines of code and be assured that it was Y2K compliant.  Only the people that wrote the code or the manager of that department could give us the required information and with out their cooperation it was not going to happen.   

            I continued to inform both my bosses but they would turn a deaf ear to me and even erase my emails and voice mails with out reading them.  We did have the technology to know if an email was read or a voice mail listened too and I kept a detailed electronic log of this.  I was preparing to defend myself with the documents. 

            That summer we had an audit and as a publicly traded company now it was required to have a Y2K plan.  The auditor came to me and I explained that the company was Y2K compliant and produced all the documents to that affect with the exception of the applications department.  The auditor knew full well that was the weakest link and really the only one that mattered and she was not happy that nothing had been done in this area.   I showed her hundreds of attempts I had made to get support from my bosses and from the manager responsible she took it and went to talk to the VP.  He of course was very furious that I had made it quite clear he was not interested in my input about the lack of progress in this department since he was the responsible executive and this department was a direct report of his.  In keeping with his true colors however he simply relieved me of the project and now put the manager in charge that had done nothing in her own department.  The entire company with the exception of her area was completed and in a month she completed her area and got the credit for the entire project and I was made to look like a failure in everyone’s eyes.   

            I have tried for years and years not to say anything about what was going on in my life at work and at home thinking it was normal but as time has passed I understand nothing about it was normal and it did have a devastating impact on my life and the life’s of my children as well.  And the fact is some very corrupt and sick people saw that and took advantage of my situation to make themselves look like heroes to the world. 

            This was also the year we were due to renewing our long distance contract with our carrier.  This was a major contract since we were talking several million minutes a year we used in long distance phone calls.  Early in the year an amendment to our current contract was sent to us for signature.  I had been working that out for a few months in order to save our company some $40,000 that year in the current contract.   The requirement for a timely signature was critical and my VP was out of the office he had left it on his desk because he did not have the time to review it before he had to leave on a trip.  I called him and told him we would loose the $40,000 savings if was not signed today and sent overnight to our carrier.  He told me point blank I was not to sign it and he would take care of it all next week.  I had been working with telephone carriers most of my adult life and knew the terms of the contracts were absolute in this case and it was something we had asked for ourselves.   I went to the CFO with my problem explaining that my VP told me that I did not have the authority to sign contracts any longer and not to sign it so I asked the CFO if he’d sign it.  He said no and said John you know what you have to do now do your job for the company and sign the damn thing.   I did sign in and I did send it in and we did get the $40,000 in credit.  However, when my VP returned he nearly fired me for disobeying his direct order not to sign it.  So from that point on as you can realize I would not sign anything any longer regardless.  

            As the proposals came in from all the carriers my two new bosses were determined to make their own mark on the company in this area and would not listen to any of my input.  My VP chooses a vendor that was the exclusive vendor for his church.  I tried in vain to tell him that they did not have the system capacity or expertise to handle a major catalog company like us and our requirements.  He refused to listen and signed with them anyway.  After two months into the project they were no further along than when we stared.  Part of the problem was they did not own any of the long distance lines copper, fiber or microwave required anywhere in the country to support us.  They would be leasing of all things from our current provider those lines.  As you can imagine when one vendor looses a Mutli million dollar a year contract they are not exactly that willing to work with the new one.  My VP in order to cover his behind now and make his church look good told me I’d now be the project manager for this new vendor and get their project back on schedule by any means necessary.   I went to our software vendor and I purchased at our expense a copy of Microsoft Project and had to install it on their computer and work out the project plan for them.  They had no experience at all in projects like ours at all.   Finally after another month my direct boss was listening to me and understood full well that our current contract was about to expire and the new vendor was still as lost as the day they made their proposal to us.  Finally reluctantly the VP canceled the contract with his favorite company.  Since they had very strong church affiliations with each other he was madder at me than ever before.  He made it very clear he would destroy me by any means now he could. 

            To make matter really bad the director and the VP worked out a deal with our current vendor to keep the contract.  It was a savings over our previous contract both in per minute charges and the fact that there would be no charges for activating new circuits,  switching numbers or facilities, and no real work on our part at all since every thing would stay as it was.  They led our current provider into believing that the contract was settled and only in the hands of our lawyers for their review and input.  However, unknown to me they were secretly working out a deal with yet third vendor and actually signed with them.  It was a bad deal it saved us a little bit in the per minute costs but when I tried to explain the cost of activation for new circuits and the time required to make all the switches internally it would cost us roughly more than $100,000 in the long run.  They didn’t care about those costs since they could hide them from board by only showing just the per minute savings on the contract, which is all anyone but me understood anyway.   

            Understandably our current vendor was very upset we had developed a very good working relationship in the past 3 years.  They were going to hold us now 100% to the terms and the length of our contact and it was about to run out in a couple of weeks from when they found out.  I worked very hard with their staff and executives to extend our current contract for the duration of the time it would take to switch to our new vendor and they agreed understanding that it was the best way to maintain hope to regain the contract once again when it came for renewal.    

            The current vendor sent us an extension to our current contract for a period to cover 3 months or until we had switched to our new vendor which ever came first. That was a very big concession on their part since they were loosing their biggest contract in the region.  Now of course my two new bosses were quite proud of themselves for getting this.  I explained to both of them under the conditions of the our contract what the procedures were for signing and delivery of the contracts back to the vendor and also the limited time offer this was.  They knew what I was saying as it was just the 3 of us in the VPs office we had one week to sign the extension or for the duration of the time we used their service until we were able to switch to our new vendor our contract rates would cease and we would pay the full tariff amount for our long distance.  That meant we would be going from 5.5 cents per minute to .48 cents per minute a very drastic increase in our costs.  Those were the terms of the original contract and it was made clear in the extension.  Keeping with their former performance in signing contracts both my director and the VP refused to sign the contract extension prior to departing on separate business trips.  I called each of them and wrote emails to them and got terse responses from both of them about it was no longer my responsibility and they had it under control and a very stern reminder from my VP that he would fire me if I singed the contract.  So I did not sign the contract and neither did they.  When they returned it was about 3 days to late to have the contract in the vendor’s hands but they didn’t care they signed the extension and faxed it in to them.  Again not paying attention to the terms of the contract as to the time required to sign it or the terms we had followed for the previous 3 years in the delivery of the contract which was to send by overnight carrier to a specific person and department to ensure it was in the right hands. 

            We all went about our business for the next month until the phone bill came in and it was well over $50,000 in a month that it should have only been around $7,000.   As I dug into what happened I discovered the failure of my boss to sign and deliver the extension as prescribed in the terms.  So the vendor under the terms of the original contract was now legally charging us the full tariff rates for all long distance calls company wide. This caused a major issue as you can imagine and of course I was getting the blame for it because in this case once again my pants were not on fire when I was telling my bosses it needed to be signed and delivered in a prescribed manner.   I had done that several times it’s just they simply choose to ignore me and threaten me with my employment if I signed it myself.   Now even the CEO was disappointed in me, the CFO understood what I was going through but these two came out looking like victims and I was the bad guy.  My VP had kept his promise and discredited me finally with the CEO.   

            Not one of my bosses would listen to me when I explained things to them I knew there was a way to save the company the money but for a day I kept it to myself because it really wasn’t my responsibility any longer since I was no longer the telecommunications manager and was merely a consultant in that area.  Finally around 5 or 6 that night I approached the VP and the Director with my plan. They were both mad at me saying I betrayed them and it was unthinkable to both that the CEO would continue to come directly to me with projects and not go through them.  I asked them if they wanted me to save them this money or not I had advised them correctly for weeks on what needed to be done and they had ignored me and I would be happy to walk out the door now and let them pay .48 cents a minute or we could go back to a better rate with in a week.  They finally agreed to listen to me about my plan to use our local carrier in the between time before our new long distance carrier could take over.   I explained how all the circuits were in place and it could be done in about 4-5 days if I could give it my undivided attention and coordinate all the vendors myself.  They agreed but my director insisted on coming with me to the initial meeting I set up the next morning which by the way was a Saturday morning.  I started with all the key players and technicians there explaining clearly to them what needed to be done and how critical the timing and cooperation at all levels was to accomplish this task for us.   My boss however never being involved before in telephony and wanting to be in charge started to try to learn what we were all talking about.  He took over at that point and I was so mad by then I decided to let him run with my idea once again.  In the long run it took him 3 weeks to accomplish what the rest of us new and agreed would take only 5 days because of learning curve he had to undergo.  That of course cost the company tens of thousands of dollars in his education costs and by pushing out of the project.    

            Now to ad insult to injury no one in the company or our legal department had any expertise in telephone contracts or with the FCC.  So once again they called on me to help them.  I of course had many contacts with legal experts and specialists in this field and I took part once again in the initial communications with them and once again was quickly pushed out of the project because I understood much better than anyone else what need to happen and when. They needed to gain some experience in the matter and they were not interested in the savings it would mean to the company by letting me use my over 20 years of experience in this situation.  As it was turning out they were lying to the new attorneys about what had happened between them and the old vendor and I was really the only one that new the truth and willing to tell them what they were getting into.  They did not want anyone to know that in fact they did not follow the terms of the contract at all and wanted the blame to be put solely on the vendor.   

            By now I was working the same at the company as I was at home I was simply putting in my time no one valued any of my input except when they could take the credit.   

            Susan in the meantime was going way out of control she not only had changed in our 20 years of marriage she didn’t act all like the woman I married any longer at all. She was someone completely different now acting more and more like a teenager in every since of the word.  She rarely was home before 10 PM and usually not until after midnight. She was gone every Saturday and every Sunday as well.  Nothing was being done in the way of house work except maybe once every other month or if her mother was coming for a visit so she’d not have to listen to her lectures.  There was animal waste in the house that had not been cleaned in weeks.  When I got home I would simply go straight to my bedroom and my computer the only area that I felt comfortable in at all.   Around this time I started myself to have an affair with a woman that was chatting with on the internet in Spokane only 75 miles away.  I knew Susan was seeing someone else by all that she was doing and the fact that she would not have sex with me with out be begging for it.  I had stopped begging for it by then and had learned that the only sex I was ever going to have in that house was by masturbating myself I would do that for no other reason so I would not have to go crawling to Susan begging for some attention.   The problem was when I first met this woman she too was married and like me was not getting any attention at all from her husband except cooking his food, in my case Susan had stopped cooking my food some 15 years earlier.  Now she was no longer keeping my house clean, washing my clothes and no longer giving me any of her time at all. She had all but stopped sleeping in our bed by now as well. She would come home late and not wanting me to know how late she would go to sleep on the couch or in our youngest daughter’s bed with her.  

            The first time the two of us met it did not take long to go to a hotel room and do the wrong thing.  I felt pretty guilty afterwards and tried to ignore her for several days not wanting to get involved.  However she finally called me at work and threatened to tell my company what I had done with her, my wife and her husband if I would not continue seeing her.  So to make matters worse in my life now worked sucked, home life sucked and I was being black mailed into an affair I really didn’t want.  I ended up seeing her just over a year once a month and we’d spend a few hours together. 

            I was trying so hard to fix things at home and trying very hard to find a new job out of Idaho to try once again to get things fixed as I saw it a common problem for men we don’t ask for help we try to fix things ourselves and end up making every thing worse in the long run.  I certainly was no exception in this case at all.   

            I was getting roughly one interview a month out of state by now and some real hope but no final offers.  One day when I was in town having lunch with one of the few co-workers I could really trust, (he worked most of the time also directly for the CEO)  I received a call from our switchboard operator that the company had received a bomb threat.  That was the CEO’s worst nightmare. The operator had followed the instructions I had given her and trained her on twice a year and got every one out of all the buildings and had called 911 as well.  Then she called me and said everyone was waiting on me.  I told my co-worker what was going on and left him with the bill and drove as fast as I could back to work I was honking my horn flashing my lights and crossing double lines as often as I could to get back to work. 

            When I got there all the emergency personnel were there from around the county and all our employees were out in the parking lot standing in the rain.  My old boss was out there too trying to take charge but was clueless as to what to do as was normal for him he had 20 years of experience as a technician but little to no experience as a manger at all.  The senior person on site was the president and we had a very strong and good relationship she as did the CEO valued my input on many subjects and clearly understood my expertise in this situation.   

            I got the county emergency personnel organized along with the mangers in our main build to make a quick walk through of that building since the bomb threat was specifically given to be in another building.  We cleared the building in about 15 minutes and I directed all personnel into the main building to get them out of the rain.   The bomb threat was left on a voice mail and as teams were sent through out the other buildings I along with the county sheriff’s department tried to determine if the threat was a hoax or real.  Nothing in these cases are certain and the one thing you try to understand is the more details and motives that are given in a bomb threat the more real the potential it is real.    

            The building were the threat was left on voice mail and the targeted building as well was the company warehouse full of millions of boxes stacked up to 40 feet high.   The CEO based on his concern for a bomb threat had purchased and paid for the training of a bomb sniffing dog for our county however their working range is just less than 6’ so it was of little use in the warehouse.   

            After listening to the recorded bomb threat it was becoming clear that it was more of a scare tactic than a real bomb threat.  We took roughly an hour to clear the warehouse and come to the conclusion that the threat of a real bomb was slim to none.   I along with the sheriff, the deputy I worked closest with, the detective that was in charge (Detective Burke) and the chief of the local police department met with the President of the company my old boss and my old VP was also there by telephone.  I gave my report and my recommendations that all was clear and we should return every one to their work place.  Everyone agreed with me except my old boss and my old VP who wanted to send every one home until we were 100% sure that the warehouse was absolutely cleared.  I explained in vain to them that that would take a good month to do 100% considering all the boxes there and based on my years of experience in the Army and at the White House we were cleared in this situation.  Lucky for us the President agreed with me and simply said she was willing to let anyone go home for the day if they were too concerned for their safety or too shook up to continue.  Only about 10 employees went home and that was very understandable.  My old boss and old VP were once again furious with me because the powers in charge were listening to me and not them.  I was lucky now in that they had no power over me only rank. 

            I and the President and the other VPs who had returned to the site met with all the employees now in the main building and explained to them what we had done and we determined it was safe to return to work.   I had been there now well over 3 and half years and had the trust in this area by 99% of the employees in the company.   So with out much concerned every one returned to work.  The President wanted on more meeting with all the manager and directors along with the VPs on site and I recommended in order to build confidence in the employees the meeting needs to take place in the warehouse in view of all the employees not in open but in a room where they could see we felt safe in the warehouse as well.  Then after the meeting I convinced them all to take a walk through the warehouse as well so they could be seen by everyone that they too felt safe in there and by their presence alone help build confidence that all was okay for them to be there working.   

            Since the bomb threat was stored in our voice mail system I new full well it was of value to the investigation since I had worked so close before around the world with the police in similar situations.  After all I was in charge of over 14 military base telephone systems in Germany and of course many other systems during my career.  I also understood clearly from my experience in electronic warfare and so much undercover black world work in the Army that anything recorded ever digitally could be recovered no matter what and used to help the investigation.  I ran in to a lot of opposition from the telephone technician that use to work for me my old boss and old VP because the technician said it was impossible and he did not want to do it.   Again by now the CEO was back and understood I knew what I was talking about in this area.   

            I contacted a friend of mine who I worked with in the White House and now was in charge of all electronic security for the US Treasury and got the name and phone number of a government contractor used in just such cases to extract and analyze.   I contacted them and they said that the system had not been developed for our telephone system however they were more than happy to assist us in developing one for us free of charge so they could intern use it in the future as well.   

            In the time it was taking to do this I learned of Detective’s Burkes style,  he had no real leads other than an assumption that the persons phone where the threat was left was connected to the person who called in the threat.  She was one of our warehouse managers whose husband had committed suicide about a year or so before this.  He was very upset in that he could never prove what he wanted to prove that she had in fact killed her husband. He went throughout or facility telling anyone his theory that she was cheating on her husband and was in fact a lesbian and that she wanted him out of the way for her affairs.  I told him point blank I was not interested in his theories on past events and I wanted him to stop telling those stories to me and anyone else in the company and concentrate on the bomb threat not a pet project of his.  He was upset with me but knew I had a better connection with the sheriff and if he didn’t do as I requested I would go to the sheriff with my requirements. 

             The government contractor came through for me as I knew they would I had too much experience in managing similar things in the government to think other wise.  But it really pissed off the old technician, my old boss, and my old VP to once again for me to be proven right when they made such a stand that it couldn’t be done.   I turned over the new digital voice recording to Detective Burke and I guess at that point pissed him off to that I would know more about this field than he did.  No one understood how a man that didn’t know  how to do so many things himself could know so many things could be done if given to the right person.  They all came from backgrounds that if they couldn’t so something or didn’t know how to personally do they believed it couldn’t be done and worse did not want anyone to think that they couldn’t do it. It was easier for them to say it was impossible than admit they were not experts in every thing.  The biggest requirement for an officer in the military was not doing things but know how to get the mission accomplished using all the resources with in his command including the experts that Army assigned him under his command.  I was an expert commander in knowing the capabilities of my equipment and men better than they did themselves that was my job.  It was not to turn the knobs of the equipment but who knew best and for me to know the who, the how, and the what to deploy to support every mission I was given. 

            By now I had been reassigned to a new boss and all things it was a 30 year old who was just a personnel secretary a few years earlier.  Somehow she was now the director of personnel and I was under her to get me away from my old boss that didn’t like me at all.  All I was doing now was company safety and security along with the personal security requirements for the CEO and his family.  Many things I did for him and his family were very confidential and I really could not discuss with my bosses because it would compromise the plan they never understood that and simply got madder and madder at me and the relationship I had with him and his family.  I don’t think the CEO ever understood for one second the position it left me in with the rest of the company thinking I was his pet and that he did not trust them as much as he did me.  It left me out of a lot of friendships as a result and a lot of back stabbing by those too inexperienced to understand.   

            In December of 1999 the CEO was getting more and more concerned about security in light of the news on Y2K.  I was working now with the county by giving presentations to the community that all was well and there really was no concern beyond the normal day to day natural disasters we could face.  I  simply went through the normal FEMA recommendation of a 3 day supply of food, water, cash, etc.  However at the company the CEO was more concerned about personal safety of the executives.  I had heard of no specific threat and tried in vain to get him to explain to me why he was so concerned because if he had a specific threat it would be easier to defend against and protect who ever was being threatened.  He never told me but asked me to go out of state to hire extra security for the company  and all executives on New Years Eve.   He did not want any of the local police or for that matter any police in Idaho involved at all.   So I looked in Spokane and found a private security company that was owned and staffed 100% by Washington State Police also licensed to work in Idaho.  A perfect situation I thought since they were better trained than any of the police I knew in Idaho and also state police that understood the use of deadly force and the laws of both states.   

            To help the county I lived in to be ready in the event of any disaster but at this time more specifically Y2K I had found an old military emergency generator at an Air Force excess property depot.  The county had first requested some $10,000 from our company to help them purchase a new generator.  However the CEO said they needed to find a better deal and do some work themselves he was not going to simply give them $10,000 for this. That is when I started to look around knowing from my experience in logistics in the military that I may well find  the required generator at a fraction of the cost.  I found such a generator right down in Boise at the Air National Guard base there we could have for $800.00.  My CEO quickly agreed to that deal and I also volunteered my time and my truck to pick it up. 

            Working closely with the sheriff’s department and the search and rescue team I belonged to I obtained a tailor and drove the 550 miles to Boise and pulled the generator back to Sandpoint.   There were some initial complaints by the usual members of the county board of supervisors because it would still require some money on their part for installation and some minor repairs but after they spend about $200.00 of the counties money the generator was installed and fully operational giving them for the first time an Emergency Operation Center with back up electric power.   

            Since I was doing so much work for the county and the EOC and the deputy in charge of EOC was a good personal friend I was asked to be the deputy EOC director sometime before this.  However as it got closer to Y2K they really wanted to take advantage of my expertise in this area and have me become the director of the EOC to be in charge during any emergency situation.  The sheriff was reluctant only because he wanted to have a sworn deputy in charge for obvious reasons.  So I agreed I would become a reserve deputy sheriff for him so he could use me in that capacity.  I went through the background check with out incident as I did for the assignment to the White House I didn’t even have a single traffic violation in my record for over 20 years.  I also made it through the board with out incident as well. I had worked so much in the past 3 years with nearly every deputy, and chief of police in the county.   

            December of 1999 I learned exactly my worst fears about how Susan felt about me that I had tried to overlook and ignore for years.  We went to her work Christmas party and to her it was my requirement since she attended at least half of my military parties I was required to go to.  I say she only attended half because she hated going and would come up with an excuse not to attend more often than attending them.  I went to the party but was devastated by what I overheard her tell a couple of her friends when she did not know I was near and able to hear.  They were talking about their x husbands and in Susan’s case she as talking about me.  They were talking about having affairs and how she could do what ever she wanted to me and never worry about me leaving her or having an affair she could go play anytime because I was such a goody two shoes and too worried about my security clearance and reputation that I would never say anything about her or leave her.   To my horror I knew she was in fact right and she had been having affairs it seems for years now and that is why she loved for me to take the kids out on the weekend and give her a weekend off and why for the past several years when that became impossible for me to do and keep my work schedules I had put a cramp in her style.    

I should have confronted her but I just couldn’t at that point I simply walked away my head  hung in shame at how I had been so used for 20 some years by her as a pay check for her affairs and games and a simple sperm donor when she could have children.  I proceeded to get very drunk that night more drunk than I had been in over 20 years in fact.  I was drinking scotch by the water glass full now.  I went out with her and her friends to her favorite hot spot with the loud music and just our part was over 25 every one else was 25 or under.  She would go out on the dance floor and dance like a stripper and a slut with anyone and even with me once. I was so disappointed in what I had heard and her performance I could only dance with her once.  In all our years of marriage over 20 by then she had never done that for me in private ever.  As I sat the rest of the evening at the table her best friend and boss told me I better change and soon and accept Susan as she is or I was going to loose her.  I just kept wondering what Susan had told them all because even though she was out dancing like a slut on the dance floor with every one watching when we got home she would sleep on the couch and leave me alone in my bed to masturbate if I wanted any attention.  I just kept thinking the Susan I had married and grew to love so much no longer existed at all and she was somebody now that I did not know and really didn’t want to know as she was.  They had no idea how she treated me at home I am sure of that or since they had all been married at least 3 times before and in a couple cases 4 or 5 times they simply were all sluts and used every man they ever knew until they were done with them.  Susan I know for a fact considered every person and every thing she ever knew as throw a ways.  For years I had to endure the stories from her mother about how she treated her boy friends growing up turning her back on them as if they never lived if they did anything to make her mad.   I would also have to listen to her tell me the stories over and over again how Susan’s old boyfriends would come crying to her to try to find out what they did wrong and why she would have nothing to do with them at all.  I can tell you in no uncertain terms I took that as a lesson and advice from her mother in the following years that I would never stoop so low as to cry to her mother about Susan ever. If she did not want tell me what I did that was so wrong I would have nothing to do with the lot of them.  Besides after 20 years of being married and considering at least myself I was part of the whole family I deserved a little more respect that that of a high school or college boyfriend when it came to some sort of answer.   

I got so drunk that night I was throwing up as Susan drove us home in my truck I was hanging out the window throwing up for the fist time in 20 years and throwing up about ever 3 or 4 minutes.   When we got home I was throwing up even more and stayed in the bathroom tearing off my clothes.    I don’t know how any one else is when they throw up but I get very hot and need to be cooled off.  I passed out in the bathroom with out a shirt on in December in the mountains of Idaho and we never turned on the heat in the bathroom at night.  It was only turned on in the morning to heat it up when we were going to take our showers and get dressed.    I laid there all night naked and freezing but too out of it to wake up.   Two days later I had pneumonia there was no help at home when I first realized I could not breath it was I could do to keep my self calm and drive myself to the doctor.  Oh every one was home but no one ever had gone to me to the doctor before and since Susan could have covered me and maybe prevented this in the fist place I’d rather die on my own anyway by now.  

It was like during the summer before for some reason all of a sudden when ever I was having sex and at the moment of climax I got an extreme headache in the back of my head it would feel like it was going to explode.  I was sure I was having a stroke or something I had never had any headache like it before and never something that came on so painful in an instant.  I went straight to the emergency care facility (alone) no way Susan would have ever believed it or cared if she did. She would had said it was another excuse to have sex more often (remember we were  having sex together now only 6 times a year)  I was so embarrassed to tell the doctor that I was masturbating and climaxing when this came on I just never did.  Well that was no help in the long run.  After about two weeks of this and 3 headaches he sent me to a neurologist down in Coeur d’ Alene since he could not find anything physically wrong to explain the headaches and  I could not tell him what was going on when they would hit me.   The neurologist of course being an expert in his field knew exactly what questions to ask and he came right out after about 5 minutes and asked if these headaches were occurring during sex and the moment of climax.  I was surprised that he knew to ask that question and I told him yes.  He said it is yet unexplained but somewhat common for men in their 40s to experience this.  He took out a book looked up what he called it and let me read it.  It happens to some men just like it was happening to me it would come on with out warning and continue for various durations stopping just as unexplainably as they started.  He gave me some pills to take for the pain and scheduled an MRI just to be sure there was nothing really physically wrong with me.  True to what he said the headaches and pain continued about another month and then they simply stopped happening.  

As New Years Eve approached and some time between Christmas and New Years I was still chatting on line through AOL with various women trying to get some human contact.  If  my friend I knew in Seattle for over 5 years now was not on line or the woman I was seeing in Spokane I would chat at random with any woman anywhere about anything it didn’t need to be about sex I just needed some two way conversations with any woman since Susan was never home now.   What ever subject the woman brought up I was more than willing to talk about either how their day was going, their children, their marriage or their desire for sex.  Many were just as interested about lack of sex at home as I was and as always I let them start the conversation I would simply participate. 

As fate would have it during this time I started talking to a lady in San Diego, of course in the years I had been chatting where they were from or even if they were a woman was of little concern since I had learned some 70% were fake and simply as lonely as I was.  I was browsing through the AOL adult chat rooms and saw a new one called teachers.  Not knowing exactly what it was I got in thinking I could find someone like me who had not gotten much sex in their lives and not much variety and we could have something in common to talk about.  In a few moments I found what was suppose to be a 36 year old woman that was in the room and I sent her an IM to say hi.  That was the biggest mistake I ever made in my life and the rest of this will be covered in the next chapter and I am sure what my friends and family have waited to hear for the last six years of my life.