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the pantry floor.

  Now the presence-of-mind thing to do in that situation would have been to first calmly put on one's pants or panties, as appropriate. Then when fully and properly dressed to reopen the pantry door. And last of all, reposition the post to support the shelves then go about picking up the fallen cans. After all, if the pair were fully and properly clothed, and if the pantry door were open, then a multitude of completely innocent, plausible lies could have explained how the mess on the pantry floor had occurred.

  Unfortunately, presence-of-mind is not easily come by when an untoward event occurs at the climactic moment when a person is quite improperly climaxing with another person's spouse. So instead of immediately replacing their nether garments, the surprised couple first repositioned the post, then scrambled to pick up the fallen cans. There were so many this activity was still ongoing when the fake orchid fanciers reentered the kitchen.

  Upon entering his kitchen, Mr. H. heard strange muffled noises coming from behind the closed pantry door, and he became alarmed. He knew the post supporting the pantry shelves was poorly attached. He had been meaning to fix it for weeks, but had never gotten around to it. He feared it had finally slipped. However, he had not the slightest suspicion about the cause of its displacement. After all, exactly as was the case with the cheating couple inside the pantry, Mr. H. was completely certain he and his neighbor's wife had been equally as successful in pulling the wool over the eyes of their respective spouses as they had been in pulling down each other's pants or panties. So Mr. H. had absolutely no inkling of what had gone on in the pantry. But when he pulled open the pantry door and saw the bare bottomed couple scrambling around in the dark picking up fallen cans, he gained more than an inkling.

  III

  Except in criminal cases, where motivation is a relevant issue, legal depositions usually deal only with facts, not with people's emotional responses to the facts. So the divorce depositions give me no special access to information about the feelings aroused in the several parties by the bare bottom revelation of Mr. M.'s and Mrs. H.'s pantry panty party. But I think all of you can reasonably guess such things. What the couples actually did, however, they had to report in their divorce depositions.

  At first the pretend orchid viewers, not having been caught with their pants down, tried to play the role of sinned against innocents. But when the pantry players counterattacked in defense, the infidelities of them all were soon exposed. And it isn't a bit surprising that everything came out quickly and completely. Each of the two cross-coupling couples had not been paying any attention whatsoever to anything but the immoral carnal pleasure of the marriage-vow-violating game they had been playing. Thus, being carelessly certain their spouses never suspected their clandestine copulations, both cross-couples had left trails of conspicuous evidence.

  When the cussing finally subsided, the discussing began. It rapidly became clear to all that things couldn't continue as they were. This was because another conspicuous fact came out quickly and completely once the fact of their mutual marital infidelities was conceded. All four admitted that for some time they had been satisfying all their libidinous urges, not with their own, but with their neighbor's spouse.

  Now obviously neither the Hatfields nor the McCoys are good conservative Americans. Still they aren't completely morally bankrupt, and none of the four was willing to get involved in that big city morally decadent arrangement called wife swapping. And even if they had been, that wouldn't have solved their problem. Wife swapping involves the occasional brief trade of marital partners for recreational sex. That wasn't what these couples were doing. They weren't simply playing games, enjoying occasional extra sex with their neighbors. No. Each was getting all his/her sex from his/her neighbor. Thus, if they were getting no conjugal comforts in the arms of their own spouses, it must be because their ardors for their own spouses had cooled. Wife swapping wouldn't rectify this situation. Only wife exchanging could do that. The only thing that would bring their behaviors and appetites into alignment was also the only proper thing to do, or at least as near to being proper as anything in their situation could be. They should divorce their own spouses and marry their neighbors'.

  But after discussing this a while a point came up which cautioned against overly hasty action. Reluctantly at first, but then openly and fully, each of the four admitted that there had been one particularly arousing thing about their cross-couple coupling: The added excitement given the act by the possibility that the spouse or spouses being cheated on might accidentally discover the cheaters in the act. Perhaps, they all reasonably reasoned, it wasn't entirely a case of their love for their own spouses having been replaced by love for their neighbor. Perhaps it was this threat of being discovered which had made the cheating so exhilarating. In short, had they simply been savoring forbidden fruit?

  Their situation was embarrassing, but at the moment it was private. However, it would be anything but private if they divorced their own spouses and married their neighbors'. After thereby enduring great embarrassment, and also not a small amount of good conservative American condemnation as well, if they were then to discover that forbidden fruit, and not altered affections, had been motivating their cross-couple sex lives, then their situation would be not only engulfingly embarrassing, it would be intolerable. What could they do then? Re-divorce and re-remarry? If they did any such thing Hometown's good conservative Americans would probably ride them out of town on a rail.

  After discussing this at some length and depth, discussions which went on till well after darkness, they decided to put their passions to the test. Mrs. H. went up to the H.'s bedroom and loaded a small suitcase with a few personal items. When she came back downstairs, with Mr. M. carrying her little suitcase, the four people walked over to the McCoy home. There Mrs. M. went to the M.'s bedroom and loaded a similar small suitcase with similar items of her own. When she returned, the four bid Good Night to their own spouses. Then, with Mr. H. carrying her suitcase, he and Mrs. M. returned to the H's home. And that night each cross-coupling couple openly enjoyed the carnal pleasures they had been covertly indulging. And since all the spouses knew all that was going on with all of them, none of the thrills of the evening could have been due to any threat of being discovered.

  IV

  Bright and early the next morning each woman arose, kissed her night's companion, then scurried across the parts of the half-acre lots separating the two couples' two houses, returning thereby to her own home and husband. There each couple frankly appraised their first experience with candid, as opposed to clandestine, cross-copulation. And each of the four parties decided it had been just as thrilling as when done on the sly.

  But one trial doesn't prove anything. So after spending a day, a day in which all four tried to the best of his/her ability to act as if it were only an ordinary day on his/her half-acre, as soon as it got dark enough so prying eyes would not be able to see them, each lady scurried back across to the neighbor's house and spent another night cross-coupling.

  This went on for about a week with no diminution in the nighttime pleasures any of the four was obtaining. So they called a meeting. This time at the McCoy house. There they all agreed that, indeed, their affections had really changed. Their marriage-vow-violating acts had not been simply the savoring of forbidden fruit, but rather they all really had fallen in love with their neighbor's spouse. So they decided the ladies would discontinue their morning and evening shuttle and move in with their new loves. Since the four weren't yet willing to face the embarrassment of openly divorcing and remarrying, they decided this would not be a permanent arrangement, but rather a further, more definitive test. If this arrangement worked out emotionally for all the parties involved, then divorce and remarriage would be the next, permanent step.

  But moving into her neighbor lover's house required quite a bit of … well … moving. All of each woman's clothing and personal belongings had to be transferred to her ne
w home. Not only that, but each woman wanted her own cooking utensils and cleaning tools, etc., so all of these things also had to be moved. Since the two cross-coupling couples still intended to keep their new living arrangement private, this materials relocation process was quite involved. They couldn't just openly transfer things in the middle of the day. Instead they did it covertly in the middle of the night. But the darkness necessary to keep from revealing their unusual, indeed immoral arrangement made the moving job particularly difficult.

  Nevertheless, over a period of about two weeks they managed to get the whole job done. However, they hadn't been able to keep it as secret as they wished. Occasionally a townsperson happened to be driving by while part of the moving was underway and noticed it. And every one of these accidental observers began to wonder about what he/she had observed. So even before the moving was complete, questions started being asked around town about what could be going on on the Hatfield and McCoy places. But what really got the gossip and rumors going was what townsfolk saw, or rather what they didn't see in the daylight. They never saw