by Janet Walker
***
“Mm Mm! Ah-Ah! Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah, baby!”
The woman’s moans of ostensible pleasure emanated from the television set and penetrated Grace’s shroud of sleep. Behind her sleep mask, her eyes opened in disbelief. Surely, she was mistaken. Darrel was not that stupid. She lifted her head from the pillow, pulled off the mask, saw the naked bodies on the screen, and glared at the man beside her. Darrel reclined with pillows wedged between his back and the headboard. As before, he lay with his feet crossed and hands clasped behind his head. In response to her awakening glare, he glanced at her with disregard before staring again at the TV. Grace bristled. At the same time, she noticed the tangled mass of black hair in Darrel’s armpits and felt repulsed.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“The hell does it look like?”
“It looks like you’ve lost your goddamn mind, because that’s the only way you’d bring that filth into my bedroom!”
Darrel scoffed. “Well, now, see, that’s where you’re wrong, Grace,” he said. “It’s not just your bedroom, it’s mine, too—I pay for this shit. Which means I can watch this anywhere I want to, including here. Especially here. Man oughtta be able to watch a dirty movie in his bed, if he wants to.”
She stared at him. “You bastard. You know how I feel about those things.”
“Then go to sleep.”
“I was asleep! Until you woke me up with that—garbage!”
“Maybe you oughtta watch the garbage. Might do you some good.”
She glared, frustrated. “Fuck you,” she said and turned away from him to lie back down, her body hot with anger.
“I wish you meant that,” he retorted.
Grace lay on the pillow and fumed. He was paying her back for denying him for so long, that’s what this was about, and even though she knew he had a right to be angry, still she hated him for using pornography as a weapon. She had established a rule early in their marriage, when he asked timidly how she felt about watching sex films. She had made very clear her stance on the matter. Of course, she never told him why, never told him the origin of her disgust, but that was not his business to know. He only needed to know that the explicit representations filled her with revulsion and so she wanted none of it in her home—and if not that, certainly not above the basement level.
But now, here he was.
Since her back was to Darrel and she hadn’t replaced the mask, Grace peered reluctantly at the large screen beyond their feet. An orgy was taking place, with three white couples engaging in oral, anal and vaginal acts. Grace squeezed her eyes shut and felt overwhelmed by repugnance for the activities on the screen, and for the man lying behind her. Darrel shifted his weight and Grace felt the bedding move on his side of the mattress. He had slipped beneath the covers and so she tensed, ready to physically attack if he touched her. She waited, but to her relief he made no move in her direction. The pervert. Getting aroused by what he was watching. How had she ended up with someone like him!
The TV moans turned into screams of orgasm. Grace opened her eyes, closed them again, tried to block out the sounds, but the woman’s cries—what they were supposed to imply—worked their way into Grace’s emotions until, in the region below her navel, a hot flash of arousal burned intensely for a second before dissipating. The bodily reaction surprised her—and angered her, because it signified a lack of self-control. She snapped at Darrel. “I wish you’d turn that shit off!”
“I will. When I’m done.”
And then she felt and heard it—a soft repetitive noise, a rhythmic disturbance on the mattress. Astounded, she twisted her neck to look behind her. Darrel lay as before, but his legs and lap were draped by the comforter, and one of his hands was beneath the covers—which fluttered with each movement of his concealed hand.
Grace’s hot face was instantly moist with embarrassment and hurt, because in more than three years of acquaintance she had never seen Darrel masturbate. And during their two-and-a-half- year marriage he had always, up till now, respected her enough to keep the tapes and any notion of self-gratification out of sight. But now, here he was. She glared at him but he ignored her and kept watching the screen. When he closed his eyes and tilted back his head in pleasure, she turned away in disgust and lay down again, not sure what to do, how to handle this new situation. Yes, she meant what she had once told Dr. Curtis—she hated Darrel sometimes. Despite the public’s perception of him as a man of gentle manners, she knew he still behaved, at times, like an uncouth country boy, burping audibly and releasing awful gas and thinking it funny. And now, here he was, lying next to her, his wife, shamelessly stroking himself into arousal because of some low-budget exhibitionists. Grace moved closer to the edge of the bed. She had to grip the lip of the mattress to keep from falling over the side, but she needed to get far away from Darrel. That was best, because she was convinced that if there had been a knife nearby, and if he had tried to touch her in that moment, she would have reached back and stabbed him with it.
More screams from the TV. The second couple was climaxing. Grace closed her eyes to keep from seeing on the screen the spurts of the man’s white discharge—but she did not close them quickly enough and so caught sight of the sticky fluid. It was too much—she was on her feet before she knew it, and she couldn’t stop. She fled to the bathroom, where she closed the door and hurried to the toilet bowl. Was her body really going to do it, or did she just think it was—no, she believed the sensation was genuine, yes, it was, and so she bent over the bowl and gagged. A liquidated form of her dinner—fruit salad, tuna, Perrier—ejected from her throat and spewed out of her mouth, falling into the blue scented water below. She waited. Another heave brought up the rest. The attack left her panting and disgusted—and angry, because it meant a momentary loss of bodily control. She stood above the bowl, waiting again, but her body was silent, the nausea gone. She flushed the bowl and went to the sink, where she rinsed her mouth with water, brushed her teeth, flossed, rinsed with water, brushed again, rinsed with the sulfur remover, rinsed with mouthwash, and rinsed her face with water. With the faucet turned off, the bathroom was silent, so she listened for sounds coming from the bedroom. There were still TV noises, but they were softer—he had lowered the volume—and so she couldn’t be sure what he was watching.
She found out.
As soon as she emerged from the bathroom, the images struck her. A new scene, strains of poor-quality music—and two women. Sitting on a sofa, largely unclad, involved in deep kissing. Grace’s face grew hot again, this time with embarrassment alone. Her eyes went to Darrel, hoping he did not look at her, at her reaction, at her eyes. He stared at the screen, mesmerized, his hand moving quickly beneath the covers. She did not know him like this—relentless in his defiance, openly lusting after other people, reveling in perversion. She wanted him out of her bed—now—but decided it would be easier to let him have the win tonight. She slipped into bed again and turned away from him and the TV.
Ohhhhhh…yes. Yes, baby, lick it good.
Grace turned her head. Saw them. They had advanced to cunnilingus. Her face flamed and she jerked her gaze away from the screen. Caught her own reflection in the wall of mirrors on the other side of the room. Heard the womanly moans continue but would not turn her head, refused to look again at the performance. No. Nor would she—could she—stay within hearing of their affected pleasure. She would sleep in a guest suite but would deal with Darrel and this shit tomorrow. She left the room, throwing back a warning, calmly spoken.
“If there was any chance for us…you just killed it.”
