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I can’t explain this. My wife is on
her fifth installment of Horny Housewives,
and has sprouted a tattoo. It bridges her lower back – favored spot of
twentysomethings – and reads Cantinflas,
in smooth Gothic lettering.
But
here’s the catch: it’s not really there. Even a man who’s not using his
husbandly privileges gets occasional glimpses, and believe me – it’s not there.
So what does Cantinflas mean, and how
is it arriving? Temporary tattoo? Computer enhancement? It’s much too late to
be saying so, but this is getting weird.
Otherwise,
our lives are nearing perfection. My wife has piled the porch with gourds and
pumpkins, and dangled a full-size witch from the magnolia tree. She’s also
volunteering for a local theater group, taking tickets and selling
refreshments.
Marcus
is fulfilling every fatherhood fantasy of my generation by following the baseball
playoffs with the intensity of an archaeologist charting Atlantis. I’m trying
to curb my enthusiasm – lest he dump the whole thing in the coming years of
teen rebellion – but when your son asks you how to calculate on-base
percentage, it’s hard not to break out in tears.
Laura’s
been taking piano lessons, but was watching a documentary on Yo-Yo Ma and fell
in love with the cello. She quotes the master’s line about the sound being the
closest, of all instruments, to the human voice. We’ve promised to deliver said
instrument on her next birthday, as long as she continues with piano till then.
Perhaps
it is exactly this Norman Rockwell/Frank Capra/Walt Disney shit that explains
my good behavior. My libido lies in zero-Kelvin stasis, stunned into submission
by my good fortune. I do not miss Kelly at all, and have decided that any
meeting – even for the sake of porno investigation – would be a bad idea.
Lastly,
there is Pisarro. Hopkins Grinder, the man who fucked up his marriage before it
started, is now grief counselor to a woman with a soul the size of three
football fields. We meet for lunch in the Stanford union, and she tells me
stories about Andrew.
He
was quite a man. He earned an MBA just so he could run a food bank in Oakland,
constructing channels between day-old goods and those who might otherwise be
feeding from Dumpsters. He became a leading light of East Bay charities, and
was constantly turning down offers to run for office.
Which
made it all the more stunning when he went so completely bad. After six months
of increasing apathy and ill temper, he walked out of his office one day and
never came back. When his family tracked him down, three months later, he was
squatting in an abandoned cabin in the Sierra foothills, drinking himself into daily
stupors and avoiding all contact with the human race.
“He
was always such a rational kid,” said Pisarro. “He believed that every problem
had a logical solution. Which is why it was so hard for him to understand that
he could no longer trust his own mind – that something so trivial as a chemical
fluctuation could undo his thoughts.”
Pisarro
went up there twice, and twice was rebuffed. The second time, he chased her
into the road and threw a whiskey bottle that grazed her head. Realizing that
Andrew was now a danger to others, she alerted the local sheriff – an action
that saved her brother’s life. It was on a patrol of the “nutcase cabin” that a
deputy discovered him face-down in the driveway, overdosed on sleeping pills.
They
locked him up in a mental ward at the county hospital, and Pisarro filed for
power of attorney. A month later, she got the news. Andrew had ripped away the
corner of a heating vent - tearing his
fingers to shreds – and taken the sharp edge to his jugular. Even with regular
room-checks, by the time they found him it was too late.
It
could be that I’m in love with Pisarro. I’m not sure that it matters. Her
sadness gives me something to believe in. I also get a nice tradeoff on sordid
details (it’s such a relief to tell someone!).
In fact, she finds my recent escapades so entertaining that it makes me rethink
the entire gender. But then, she’s a doctor. She’s seen everything, and
understands sex at its primal level: this enormously pleasurable act that our
bodies are designed to perform.
Okay.
Don’t place me on the rolls of the celibate just yet. I still enjoy watching
Dr. Pisarro walk away, and have composed a lengthy to-do list should the
heavens grant me her favors. But first things first.
Late
at night, when morning has become a distinct possibility, I am dreaming of
Pisarro’s lips on mine, petals of spongy flesh sliding across my mouth. I seem
to think that this is the extent of it – the basic teenage makeout session –
but then I feel a distinct warmth surrounding my cock. Am I fucking Pisarro?
The
edge of a tooth triggers me awake. My wife is sucking on my dick like it’s a
circus toy, performing feats of circumlocution that I never dreamed were in her
repertoire. She whips her tongue like a tentacle around the head as she works a
fist up and down the base. Charged up by weeks of inactivity, I am gone
quickly, erupting into her mouth. She swallows, licks me clean, then pulls up
beside me with a grin.
“Hi.”
“Um…
hi,” I respond. “Thanks.”
“Hoppy?
I’m… I’m sorry.”
“Whatever
for?”
“I’ve
had the chance to… think about things lately, and I think I’ve spent way too
much time blaming you for the way our… intimacies have waned. Desire comes and
goes. It’s perfectly natural for a marriage to have some dry years. Maybe
instead of spending so much energy fighting you, I should have waited for
moments like tonight – that delicious hard-on you were dreaming up – and just
had my way with you.”
I
am speechless, and sleepy, and deprived of semen. The most I can do is nod my
head. “Sure. Yeah.”
She
kisses me, open-lipped, and runs her tongue along my teeth. She has never done
this before. She backs off and smiles.
“And
we made some incredible kids.” She laughs. “I’m sorry, honey. You go back to
sleep. I’m going to get some water.”
She
rises and slips into the gray spaces of the hallway. I bury the side of my face
in a pillow and reenter the portals of sleep. I am leaning on a split-rail
fence beneath snow-tipped volcanic mountains. Pisarro saunters up on a black
horse and grants me the easiest smile on the West Coast.
“You’re
really fucked now, Mr. Grinder. You’re beginning to like your wife.”
Photo by MJV
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