Despite what you read next, I love being married and I love my wife. Nothing gives me more pleasure than taking the tram home each day from my job in a Melbourne architectural office to our terrace in St Kilda and seeing my beautiful wife Angelica.
In our seven years together, we’ve had our ups and downs but we’ve managed to ride them out. And I’ve never strayed … until now.
Angelica is a twin. She tells people she’s identical to her sister Lisa and as children, not even her dad could tell them apart. But I could always spot the differences — whether it was her slightly greener eyes or smaller mouth.
I’m not trying to deflect blame here, but my life could have been completely different had our first meeting gone differently. I had met the pair at a dinner party and although I was being set up with Lisa, Angelica got in there first.
“Angelica tells people she’s identical to her sister Lisa, but I could always spot the differences.”
(Image: Getty)Lisa seemed warmer and softer but her more dominating and older (by two minutes) sister continually stole the show by saying something clever or by making suggestive whisperings to me at the table. She was an outrageous flirt and, as I found out later, has a voracious sexual appetite.
Angelica has an unusual mix of super confidence in the bedroom and debilitating low self-esteem the follow morning. I didn’t realise until after we were married that she had her own split personality. By night she’s experimental, demanding and insatiable; by day she’s like a baby needing to be looked after every minute.
The fact that she doesn’t work only exacerbates the problem. I get phone calls all day at the office over the littlest things — Angelica wants me to drop everything and come running.
I suggested she start a business or do an art class, but she would have none of it. Matters only got worse when she said having a baby would make everything all right.
My suspicion was that it had more to do with her competing with her twin sister who, although divorced, was doing a great job balancing her work as an interior designer and as a mother of a four-year-old girl.
“Lisa became my fantasy.”
(Image: Getty)She also, as I found out, still looked pretty amazing. Angelica would continually bait me with pictures of her twin looking tanned and gorgeous in her bikini on some holiday. She would tell me that I probably believed I’d married the wrong twin and even suggested that I thought of Lisa when we were having sex.
I don’t know if it was the badgering or whether there was a kernel of truth in what she said but I did start to fantasise about Lisa. In a strange way, it was quite erotic making love to someone who looked so much like the person I lusted over.
She had the same pear-shaped body and blonde hair, but somehow Lisa had become my fantasy. Is it cheating when you are still sleeping with your wife?
To be honest I thought that it would remain a fantasy, until one day my wife said Lisa would be coming to dinner that Saturday and without her child. I don’t know if my wife was simply testing me but my heart jumped at the thought.
And I’m sure she was suspicious when it came to the day and I was shaven and had discarded my usual uniform of rugby jumper, shorts and thongs for a new shirt and trousers.
That night I couldn’t keep my eyes off Lisa or her backless dress. And I don’t know if it was the wine but I’m sure she was flirting back at me all through dinner and we were both tipsy by the time dessert arrived. So when my wife said she was off to bed, I was relieved to have Lisa all to myself.
I suggested we duck out to the verandah to sneak a cigarette. The naughtiness of it only added to the excitement. After chatting about architecture and design, something I could never do with Angelica, I lent forward and kissed her.
To my amazement she didn’t back away. I put my hand down her backless dress and felt that skin I had fantasised about so many times.
I pushed her up against the railing and made love to her right there and then, underneath the bedroom where my wife slept.
The next day my wife found me sleeping on the couch … alone. She never said a word. People say a twin knows when something happens to the other one. I’ve never been game enough to ask and find out.
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