I Walked in on My Dad’s Evangelical Orgy in Our Guest Suite

The first jolt came from her. The second from him. Each vibration rocked my guilty conscience, with the realization that I, too, was a compliant, culpable party in this trio of duplicity.

“Are you sure he’ll buy it?”

Even through the brief text in my lap, I could sense Kate’s distrust.

“Boarded.”

My husband’s response was assurance enough: They were Vegas-bound, with his inebriated brother none the wiser. To him, it was a boys’ trip to gambling on the strip. To Kate — my sister-in-law — it was a last-ditch-effort to save their marriage and restore her drunken husband’s moral compass.

Hopefully a stint in rehab would come with an added dose of amnesia to erase every trace of the alleged half-sister and illegitimate child Hubby had unsuccessfully attempted to pay away. I guess kidnapping his intoxicated brother was the only way to find out.

My buzzing phone hit the floor as Flavia’s driver swerved around the fire’s edge while choppers overhead circled the burning Laguna Beach hillside. My husband had no clue I was with her — or that we’d be mid-air in minutes, too, soaring across the Pacific, towards the islands in the opposite direction on a similarly elusive foray. Nor did he — or I, at that point — know that a very familiar woman would be waiting on the other side.

I walked in on my dad pimping at the pulpit

After nearly two weeks of awakening to abrasive 3-am harangues from the guest suite — and my father’s reciprocal moans, grunts, and apologies — I’d finally muffled them both with a makeshift door sweep. Who knew a towel under the door could silence two grown men in the throes of midnight passion?

Unfortunately, tonight, the towel was no match for the disruption to come.

A rapid succession of tapping crescendoed up the hall, in tandem with heavy breathing that intensified with each “tap”. My husband slept through ten more rounds of hasty footsteps ascending and descending the staircase, with the perpetrator panting just outside our bedroom door.

I almost nudged him awake. Almost — until I was startled by a loud, patterned knock that came from downstairs.

The knock repeated itself — in the same pattern.

This time, I did nudge him awake — though it was more like a shove than a nudge — while the heavy breathing outside our room evaporated downstairs.

I heard a door open — our front door.

We live in a gated community, and our property has its own coded gate. It would take an inside job or a police warrant to get all the way to our door — and inside the house. However, judging by the multitude of footsteps and whispers below, one of those two requirements must have been satisfied.

My husband went first, snatching a golf club (as his weapon of choice), and I quietly crept behind, with my phone in hand and neighborhood security just one finger away.

Peering over the balcony down to the foyer, we watched a line of men and women scurry into the guest suite (my dad’s temporary bedroom). My husband lunged down the stairs, club raised high.

Despite cowering behind him, I’d been spotted: A woman below cracked a caffeinated smile and waved far too enthusiastically for 5 am. She looked familiar, but out of context I couldn’t place her. Then, she darted into my dad’s bedroom and closed the door behind her…

“Shhh!”

My dad paused his bellowing rant, put a stern finger to his lips, and waved me and my husband out of the room the second we cracked the door.

A dozen heads turned briefly our way, then back to their new master. A checkerboard of faces on a digital monitor revealed that my dad had recruited far more than 12 people to his morning militant cult — and privacy in our own house had become an illusion.

“He gave them our code?”

Hubby was right; my dad must have given them — and goodness knows who else — the code to our home.

Heading back to our bedroom, my dad’s bellowing insults echoed all the way up the stairs. The terrycloth door sweep had been displaced, and we could hear an orchestra of new shouts, grunts, and moans from below.

Just then, my husband’s cell rang with a number whose caller ID stopped him in his tracks. If it were his mistress, his mother, or an employee, he’d surely have masked that reaction before me; but this time, he didn’t.

All adultery is not created equal

My husband grabbed his keys off the nightstand, his face vacillating between confusion and frustration, as the 6 am surprise caller lured him out of bed.

“Utility B.S. Your mom or Craig bust a water pipe. Great timing.”

He shuffled down the stairs as I probed for answers he didn’t have. According to the utility company’s call, a leak repair required them to shut the water for the day at the Corona del Mar (CDM) duplex my mom and Craig rent from Hubby. Conveniently, a simultaneous Facetime call from my mom corroborated the story — kind of.

I expanded her incoming call to a cacophony of wheels churning water, grating metal, volatile thrashing, and heated bickering in the background. The commotion and rushing fluids seemed reminiscent of a tsunami, but four blocks and a cliffside separate the ocean from the property, thus disqualifying that hypothesis.

“They just started drilling, and the whole thing exploded!”

By exploded, my mom meant that the unlicensed team my husband hired for the under-the-table (not-yet-permitted) construction project had officially broken ground — and a water line.

She reversed her FaceTime from the rooftop to reveal an aerial view of the flooded alley. A bobcat (or some other tractor-like construction vehicle) operated by the shaggy-haired contractor spun its wheels in a failed attempt at clearing the floating debris from the carport. It was no use — broken concrete and miscellaneous metal floated down towards the next set of 7-figure townhomes and estates one block nearer to the ocean.

Like clockwork, a throng of furious neighbors waded towards the dirty water in ironically inappropriate silk pajamas for the mess they’d encounter.

I watched the confrontations unfold on the iPad’s FaceTime from the passenger’s seat, as my husband zoomed up the coast towards the flower streets of CDM. Turning onto Marigold, with the iPad commotion amplified by the chaos outside our windows, it looked like a morning witch hunt — and my mom, Craig, and the unlicensed contractors had been deemed the witches.

With the disgruntled crowds pooling at the back alley — where the architect defiantly commanded they “back off the property”, I entered from the front, avoiding the chaotic line of verbal fire.

Hubby rushed to quell the mob and somehow deflect (both the neighbors and utility repairmen) from the fact that the drilling wasn’t just careless; it was illegal. As was hiring the suspended fugitive architect posing as a legitimate professional under a stolen license…

“How bad is the damage?”

I’d texted Craig for a more objective assessment, but he hadn’t read it or replied. That was strange for him, as both my husband’s tenant and a co-investor and partial equity holder, funding a portion of these renovations.

In fact, he wasn’t on the front lines, hurling daggers at the incompetent fugitive architect-contractor team at all. Perhaps he was inspecting the property for collateral damage.

But he wasn’t.

With my hand on the doorknob, ready to console my mom from her rooftop perch — and possibly find Craig for an honest update (and cost estimate) of the damage — I heard a raspy purr from above, followed by some mumbling I couldn’t decipher.

I looked up, just barely shielded by the door’s overhang, to see Star (my dad’s unofficial girlfriend and the one who referred these builders to my husband), leaning into Craig on the bedroom balcony. And he didn’t lean away.

Star’s flirtation didn’t really surprise me — not at this point. My reaction, however, did. I was…jealous. It was a jealousy that pales in comparison to the pang of annoyance I felt when I saw my husband’s hand tracing Star’s backside at Flavia’s New Year’s Eve party. That was an exhausted reaction, cementing my disappointment and distrust in them both.

This — with Star and Craig — felt more personal. But technically, Craig is — or should be — nothing to me. But it’s clear I’ve crossed that line…

I left my husband — for an unlikely threesome

“Oh. My…”

I opened the link from Flavia’s text: The 4 am winds mixed with an unusual winter heat wave had ignited an entire North Laguna hillside — and evacuations were mandatory.

She texted over a video of flames consuming the brush behind — and dangerously close to — Emerald Bay.

“I’ve got your money, but we pushed the flight to today. With the fires, you know…but I can wire from anywhere.”

It felt strange to ask a local friend to discreetly wire over a secret retainer to a prominent high-asset divorce lawyer, but without tipping off my husband, it seemed the only way. Thankfully, that friend is Flavia, and I can trust her to keep a secret…I think.

“…wait, you should come! You know who else is going to be there?”

Just hours later, Flavia’s black Rolls SUV was steering us into the fire clouds over Laguna, as a lanky figure dashed out from the canyon and towards our vehicle. It was Greg, the sex tech CEO for whom she models, and my husband’s business adversary. Perhaps I should have figured.

The second man, however, we rescued from a familiar sprawling estate atop an ocean-view mountain. It was familiar because it belonged to the vegan cheese entrepreneur whose product launch party we’d attended months ago — and the man with whom my husband still planned to close a joint venture.

I clung to Flavia’s side once we boarded the private plane, eager for enough distance from her male passengers to exchange some not-so-public information (without defiling my husband completely — at least not yet).

She choked up her champagne, snorting through her uncontrollable giggles in response to the morning’s CDM duplex mishap (the flood).

“So, he pays cash, they’re not licensed, and you have no permit. Why did he go with them again?”

It’s a pretty normal question: Why would a supposedly intelligent, well-connected CEO like my husband — who isn’t a total real estate newbie — hire a cash-only fugitive architect and allow drilling without a permit? There is a temptation to convert the duplex garage as quickly as possible to get my dad out of our house pronto. However, that isn’t quite motive enough to flout the law and compromise Hubby’s 7-figure investment in the duplex…

“It’s Star — it was her referral. And she’s helping him close a deal. A Hawaii expansion or something. Actually, it’s a deal with…him.”

I jerked my head diagonally forward, nodding to the vegan cheese entrepreneur who appeared to be discussing something similarly covert with his sex tech CEO counterpart, via laptop passed between them.

Flavia’s eyes darted towards my husband’s target, then rolled back at me, as if they knew better.

“I think your husband’s wasting his time.”

I didn’t know what she meant then. Once we touched down on the tropical island, I started to.

A dark, wavy ponytail swung confidently forth as its sultry feminine owner dove towards the vegan cheese entrepreneur for a shameless peck on the…lips. She greeted the sex tech CEO with a handshake that morphed into a warm embrace.

Flavia was right: It seems my husband’s mistress-employee-hybrid has been playing both sides, and Hubby may be the last to know.

And here I am, 2,500 miles away from him, but just feet from his competitor, target partner, and right-hand woman, in Hawaii — the joint venture location from which he’d just returned. The irony isn’t lost on me — and neither is the unique opportunity I’ve acquired…

You can fly, but you can’t escape

Laying next to Flavia’s bronzed bikini-clad curves on the pink Hawaiian sand felt almost criminal. It was the first time I’d done what my husband seems to always do: I just…left. And left the ensuing chaos behind.

Until a vibration on my towel rocked me back to reality. If it was another Ring app alert, I vowed not to answer; I’d had my fill of duplex drama for the day.

It wasn’t. It was a text from Anne. A cascade of dread pierced through my ephemeral calm: I braced myself for another accusation towards my daughter.

Instead, I saw this:

“Nice to see your dad Sunday. He’s Mr. Popular. Love to see you there too!”

Some things are too wholesome, too good — or too strange — to be true. My dad may have snuck into Anne’s church last Sunday, but he surely didn’t tell me. And I’d bet money he isn’t there to find religion…

That’s when I realized: The woman who’d waved to me at 5 am this morning from our foyer before slinking into the guest suite — that’s where I must have seen her…or where she’d seen me. Either my dad’s holding a very unconventional bible study from his bedroom or he’s poaching early morning intruders from the biggest local megachurch around. And no matter how big a church is, it’s a small world — and an even smaller town.

Likewise, no matter how far you go — even 2,500 miles of ocean away — the problems you have (and those you don’t know you have) seem to follow you. There’s no escape, nor are there objective players. But you don’t have to be a villain to be out for yourself; that’s just called being human these days.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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