Maybe she should get one of those vibrator things. There was an article about them in last month’s Cosmo. (Not that she ever has the nerve to buy a copy; she reads them at the library, always tucked discreetly inside a copy of Good Housekeeping. After all, you never know who you might run into.) They actually have the kind you can carry with you in your handbag. She can see it now: get all hot and bothered over the zucchini at the supermarket and off you buzz! Obviously if she bought one, she wouldn’t be able to tell Richard. She knows how he’ll react – all hurt and offended. “But I’m your husband. I should be pleasing you, not some inanimate piece of plastic.” Yes, dear, but that inanimate piece of plastic has three speeds! Oh, what’s the use? She’ll never get one. Looks like it’ll be Richard’s inept fumbling to the nasal warbling of Mr Dylan till they draw their last dying breath. With any luck, maybe Richard’ll kick off first. Statistically men do die before their wives.
Oh, what’s she saying? She loves Richard. They’ve been married nearly fifteen years. Of course they lived together for eons before that. When they first met, no one got married. It was too old-fashioned. Not the thing to do. But years later when she got pregnant with Sammy (who absolutely hates being called Samantha), the parental pressure to make it legal became too much and they finally took the plunge. Good thing too, since Tyler (who prefers to be known as “T”) came along a year later. God, what a terror he was. Is. Those horrible baggy jeans he wears. How he can walk in them is beyond her. They hang so low the waistband of his Fruit-of-the-Looms sticks out a good four inches. And the way he speaks – she can’t understand a word he says anymore. Plus he’s always making these jerky hand gestures like some kid from the ghetto. Not that she’s ever actually been to the ghetto, but she does watch television. Unfortunately Sammy’s no better. Barely fourteen and she’s wearing black lipstick and drawing weird symbols on her arm with a ballpoint pen since they told her she’s way too young to get a tattoo. She was such a pretty little girl. Always Daddy’s girl. These days Richard can hardly stand to look at her.
The thing is, she really does love Richard. He’s a good husband, a good provider. Their little family never lacks for anything. The kids go to camp every summer, she and Richard always take a nice vacation when he gets his requisite two weeks off work. Last year they even made it to Europe. London, Paris, Rome. The weather was sweltering and it rained a lot, but who cared? They were in Europe! She’s never had to work. It was her choice. Just as it was her choice to stay at home with the kids. She happily gave up her career in pharmaceutical sales to be a Stay-At-Home Mom. It felt like the right thing to do at the time, and no, she’s never regretted it. Of course now that the kids are older there’s the question of what she’ll do with the rest of her life. No more kids, that’s for sure! The hot flashes have already started to kick in; she’s going to have to get one of those HRT patches soon before she goes nuts. Besides which, the risk for Down Syndrome is so much higher at her age. It’d been risky enough when she got pregnant with Tyler. Sorry. T. Thirty-five’s the cut-off year, according to the articles. Which means she was playing Russian roulette with both Sammy and T. On the one hand they tell women to have careers. Then when you do and wait till you’re older to have kids, they go and tell you you’re risking giving birth to a Mongoloid. Horrible word. Her mother always used it whenever she saw a child with Down Syndrome. Always an embarrassment, her mother.
She’s been thinking of going back to school for a Master’s degree in business management. The local university has it where you can attend classes at night. That would be perfect. She could still be there when the kids came home from school and Richard from work. They could still eat dinner together as a family, though it would need to be just a little bit earlier than usual for her to make a 7 p.m. class. She thought Richard would be thrilled for her. The night she finally made up her mind to do her Master’s she had the brochure from the university all ready for him to look at. They were lying in bed, watching Jay Leno on television and listening to Dylan, when she reached into the bedside drawer and pulled out the color brochure. The cover had all these happy smiling faces of men and women, black, white, Hispanic, Oriental, many of them her age. She felt certain she was making the right decision. She set it on Richard’s lap like a prize.
Silence.
“Wel-l-l-l-l? What do you think?” she asked.
Richard cleared his throat. It sounded like something had gotten stuck in it. She hoped it wasn’t those expensive lamb chops from New Zealand she’d cooked for dinner. She knew she should have bought another bottle of mint sauce to go along with it. The kids used up the whole thing, then didn’t even bother to eat it, just let the pink juice from the meat leach into the jellified green, turning it a bloody purple. God, how they waste food. Finally her husband spoke. “You know, there are plenty of women out there who find me attractive. Young women.”
Before she could grasp the meaning behind his words, Dylan was knocking on heaven’s door, and Richard was doing likewise in a Viagra-induced frenzy.
She was sore for a week.
It took her another week to get up the nerve to ask him what he’d meant by his women comment. “I was just saying, that’s all.”
“Richard, are you seeing another woman?”
“No, I’m not seeing another woman. Don’t be ridiculous! I love you. I love the kids. Why would I do anything to jeopardize that?’
That night a hard rain fell. At this rate she was going to have to get over to the Costco to pick up a super-sized tube of K-Y.
Cosmo doesn’t have articles about women whose husbands are experiencing what Richard seems to be experiencing. Sure, there’s plenty of those how to get a man things, all of which pertain to sex. Oral sex. Anal sex. You have to do both these days in order to be competitive. Yikes! Just the thought of Richard putting his whatsit up her whatsit – it doesn’t bear thinking about! Some things are best left for what God intended them for. Where do people come up with such crazy ideas? Aren’t vaginas fashionable anymore? Maybe Dylan really was a prophet. For the times they are a-changin’.
Because it was only a matter of time before Richard caught on to the latest fad. “Let’s do it the other way,” he cooed one night, Leno flickering on the TV screen, Dylan wheezing and whining in the background. Something’s Burning, Baby. She grimaced. By then she’d already bought the super-sized tube of K-Y, and he discovered it in the bedside drawer along with her forgotten brochure from the university. Before she could stop him, he’d flipped her onto her belly, stuffed a pillow under her pelvis, and took off at a gallop. By the time he rolled off her, Dylan was nasal-warbling It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue. She noticed the bottle of Viagra lying on the carpet beside the bed. It was empty.
“C’mon, hon, it’s no more painful than taking a shit,” Richard told her the next morning when he wanted to go at it again before work.
Ragged and Dirty was playing on the CD player. That’s pretty much how she felt.
And angry. Really angry.
Later that morning she went down to the university to speak to a post-graduate advisor.
That evening dinner consisted of KFC. There would be no more lamb chops, no more mint sauce. The days of the perfect wife were over.
Now she’s in her first semester as a graduate student. She thought she wouldn’t fit in, but it’s been no problem. There are plenty of people her age, including this one man – a funny little fellow – with an Eastern European accent and a mustache. He always smells of pickles. She probably shouldn’t say anything, but he’s sort of been coming on to her. Not that she takes it seriously. Just a little flattery. She knows she’s no hot potato. Not that she ever was a hot potato. Of course she’s still a woman. It’s nice to be made to feel attractive, even if you’re not. She can’t remember the last time Richard gave her a compliment, though he did bring her some ragged-looking red roses on her birthday. For some reason she thought he’d recycled them from work, some discarded gift to one of the office girls for Secr
etaries Day. They did smell of coffee grounds, as if he’d taken them out of the trash.
Ever since she started school, Richard has developed a hostility toward her. OK, so she never made good on her pledge to step down from Perfect Wife status. She still keeps up with the nice meals, the clean house. And yes, she still keeps up with – or should she say puts up with – the Dylan. But the other stuff, that’s got to stop already. Richard has to realize she’s not some piece of meat to be used and abused, some porn image come to life for him to act out his twisted fantasies on. Oh, yeah, did she mention about the porn? Now Richard’s into that too. She found out by accident when she was doing some research on the Web. She needed to find a home page she’d visited a few days before, so she checked for it in the History folder. Well, it was there all right. And so were a lot of other home pages. At first she suspected Tyler. You know teenage boys and their hormones! Of course it was disconcerting to think that her sweet little boy would be viewing such disgusting smut. The things that were there – she never would have imagined women allowing themselves to be used like that. Why, they didn’t even look like human beings anymore. It was just so heartbreaking that her young son’s budding sexuality should be developing in this way. She was so upset she decided to discuss it with Richard. After all, it’s a father’s responsibility to discuss sex with his son, not a mother’s. Well, did she ever get a surprise when Richard broke into laughter, then admitted it had been he who was the purveyor of extreme Internet porn. She couldn’t decide whether she was relieved or horrified that it was her husband, not her son, who was the sicko.
She probably shouldn’t have been surprised when one evening Richard came home from work with a camcorder. “I thought it’d be kinda fun to film ourselves while we’re doing it,” he said, setting the thing up on a tripod. Christ, she didn’t even know they owned a tripod. “Lots of couples do it,” he added by way of comfort.
That’s when the proverbial penny dropped. She remembered one of the websites – it had featured real couples having sex, particularly kinky sex. Was this what he had in mind? To broadcast their crude couplings to the entire world? And to the nasally soundtrack of Bob Dylan? What if someone they knew actually saw it? Not that she could imagine anyone in their social circle visiting such a website. Then again, Richard probably came across as pretty innocuous to friends and colleagues. Guess you can never tell about people.
Richard was determined to go through with it. She was determined not to.
He had it all planned, even marking it on the calendar by circling the date in red. A Saturday night. The kids would be weekending with friends. It would be just the two of them, a bottle of Viagra, and Dylan.
Oh, and the new camcorder.
D Day arrives. The day she’s been dreading.
Richard announces that he’s going to take a bath for the event. How mighty big of him, she thinks, hoping he runs out of hot water. No sooner does he turn on the taps than the CD player in the bathroom begins wheezing and warbling with Dylan. It’s All Right Ma . . .
She goes into the kitchen to get a stiff drink. She never drinks. Well, maybe the occasional glass of white wine with dinner, but not the hard stuff. But tonight she chugs down three shots of J&B as if they’re Coke. Her stomach roils as she hears her husband singing along with Dylan. She can’t decide which of them sounds worse.
All day Richard’s been leering at her. It makes her flesh crawl. She never understood what that meant before, but she can feel her skin writhing over her bones in some Edgar Allan Poe-esque frenzy. She catches her reflection in the kitchen window. It looks reptilian.
Splash. She can see him soaping his genitals with the bathsized bar of Ivory soap. Not a pretty sight as she envisions his shrunken penis and furry balls bobbing and billowing in the sudsy water. “Hon?” he shouts from upstairs. “You about ready?”
She swallows one more shot of scotch, feeling the burn going down, way down. It matches the burn she’s been experiencing in her hind end courtesy of her loving husband. Isn’t there some kind of law against what he’s been doing to her? She knows some states still have anti-sodomy laws in their books, although they were generally aimed toward homosexuals. How do they do it, she wonders, setting down her glass? How do they take it up the ass all the time?
Ever so slowly she mounts the Berber-carpeted stairs, Dylan’s voice growing louder with each footfall, his every nasal whine mounting in intensity. The splashing sounds are becoming more furious. What the hell’s Richard doing in there, jerking off? Then suddenly she realizes this is exactly what he must be doing. If he comes now, he’ll last longer for when he’s got the camera trained on them. Christ, it’s gonna be a long night.
She reaches the bathroom. The door’s wide open, and she can see Richard’s right arm moving frantically in the tub. She steps all the way inside, receiving a big smile for her efforts. Dylan’s voice is in full nasal throttle now; it’s like being locked inside a bomb shelter with Felix Unger.
“Hey! ’Bout time,” Richard scolds good-naturedly, grabbing his erect penis and waving it at her, as if this is sufficient to inflame her passion. “Hand me that towel, will you? . . . Or would you like to get in here with me?”
Her eyes drift to the CD player. It rests on a wicker shelf beside the tub, the electrical cord plugging into the socket directly behind it. They’re lucky to have so many outlets in the bathroom; there’s another one by the sink, where Richard can plug in his electric razor and she her hair dryer.
“So Miss Roberts, are you ready for your film debut?”
Miss Roberts. By that he means Julia Roberts. She’s his favorite. It’s her large mouth, you see. Richard has fantasies of – well, never mind. You can probably guess.
She moves nearer. Richard’s penis bulges obscenely in his fist. It looks as if it’s being strangled.
“Hon, have you been drinking? I swear I can smell booze on you.”
“Just a little scotch.”
“Scotch? But you hate scotch!”
She shrugs. She doesn’t hate it any more. She likes the numbness it gives her. Maybe she should’ve taken it up earlier. Guess it’s never too late to make new friends.
Richard slides downward in the bath, his freckled shoulders disappearing as his knobbly knees crook up. “Did you shave?”
“Huh?”
“You know. SHAVE.”
Oh, yeah. He’s asked her to shave her whatsit so she’ll be more exposed for the camera. She forgot all about it.
“You forgot, didn’t you?” Splish-splash. “Want me to do it for you?”
Dylan’s whine is unbearable now. It’s as if someone’s turned up the volume to full blast. She stares hatefully at the CD player, willing it to be quiet. The J&B has given her a headache. Or perhaps it’s Dylan.
“C’mon, jump in. I’ll take care of business.” Richard holds up the pink razor she uses for her legs and underarms, his smile broadening. What an idiotic expression he has. It reminds her of President Bush. She feels an overwhelming desire to tell him this, knowing it would be the ultimate insult.
Her head’s really beginning to pound now. It’s like all the air’s being sucked out of the small room. The steam from the bathwater has fallen over her eyes, clouding her vision. Richard’s goony expression has gone hazy, as if she’s viewing him through a Vaseline-smeared lens. His lips are moving, but she can’t hear anything coming out. All she can hear is the Dylan.
I’m only bleeding . . .
Her hands grab hold of both sides of the CD player. It’s lighter than it looks, she thinks, as she drops it into the bathtub.
Richard’s lips stop moving.
The bathroom light flickers.
Silence.
Kissable Cleavage
O’Neil De Noux
As I enter Etienne’s Ladies Shoe Store, shortly before noon of another steamy New Orleans day during the sizzling summer of 1948, a tall brunette in a low-cut, red dress steps up to me and says, “What do you think of these?”
My gaze lowers to her plunging neckline and she laughs.
“No, silly. The shoes.”
I look down and see she’s wearing black, patent-leather high heels. She turns and walks away to give me a better look. I checked out her sleek legs and nice round hips and wipe my sweaty brow with the back of my hand.
As she approaches my old war buddy, Freddie, sitting on one of those stools, the woman turns back to me and says, “Well, Mr Caye. Do you like them?”
She knows me?
Freddie rolls his eyes as the woman sits in the chair in front of his stool.
“Y’all know each other?” Freddie asks.
I step up to them as the woman pulls her tight dress up past her knees and raises her left knee to put her foot up on the stool. When she leans back, I can see the front of her sheer, white panties.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 7 Page 39
