If the new guy reached into his pants,
Groping for thrills
While watching women have penises
Plunged into every conceivable nook and cranny,
She would regard him no more than a slobbering beast.
It would be inconsequential whether or not he was kind.
It would be insignificant if he was honest,
Or loyal, or funny or wise.
The act would make a mongrel of him in her eyes,
An addict,
A diseased villain.
It wouldn’t matter that his actions would turn out to be
As commonplace among people as a drink at dinner,
Walking the dog
Or being late to work.
What would matter
Would be her memory of the old guy,
The bastard that betrayed her
In hotel rooms with strangers,
At Asian massage parlors,
With online escorts,
And with his 898 megabyte collection of
AVIs, WMVs, MP4s and JPEGs
Of cocks in every hole,
Making entry once, twice and thrice at a time.
Blacks on whites,
Asians on Latinos,
Women on women,
Human on animal,
Entire orgies.
Set walls, breasts and faces slathered with spit and ejaculate.
The old guy cheated on her,
And he tainted the pure reservoir in her heart
With the lethal poison of mistrust,
And at the mere mention of pornography,
The PTSD of his deceits releases the toxin
Into her emotional bloodstream.
In that moment, the guy’s face becomes the face
Of the son-of-a-bitch that wronged her.
His heart then brims over with the blackness of sin.
His thoughts and feelings become plagued by mental illness,
And all hope drowns in her polluted river.
If the new guy pleasures himself to sexual images,
She will exile him from her kingdom.
This new guy,
The next new guy,
And the next,
And the next …
All of them become unwitting slaves to her confirmation bias,
Bolstering her rationales,
Justifying her fears,
And deepening her bleeding indignation.
The new guy is always the old guy,
And she will be forever alone.