Trifecta #33: Post Three

Oddly, the third prompt of Trifecta's Week 33 Extravaganza is: respond to this song in 33 to 333 words. I'm going back to the 333. Maybe it's  because of Velvet Verbosity, but I like the precision of an exact word count for these things.



Make It Last

Few things I know, but one is: in the long-term, all things are cyclical. Including emotions. Including my own. I hate this about myself, about my maleness, but it’s also true that the proximity in time of love’s last physical confirmation, well, that affects the cycle. It’s been some time now. Two weeks? Three?

I’m on my way home. I know that dinner’s waiting, and I’m late. But I’m not hurrying. The streets are packed. I should be below, on the train, on the express line to my beloved, but I am more magnanimous up here than down there. Jostling on the streets feels more companionable than avoiding eye contact and smelling the snow-wet clothes and body odor, suffering the prolonged body contact of the subway.

I’m not far now, in a geography marked by city blocks. Familiar landmarks gesture to me, hurrying me home. By not thinking of my burdens, my woes, I’m of course thinking of them, and suddenly I’m snapped both out of and back into myself: a couple on a park bench, most mundane and most sublime, ageless in winter vestments, scarf-wrapped head resting against goose-downed shoulder, gloved hand in gloved hand, lips moving in intimate murmurs. And for that moment, I am lost.

I come back, and my step quickens. I remember:  my brother driving me to the church, saying, “If you can always picture her and what she looks like as she walks up the aisle toward you, you’ll be okay.” I see her that day. I peeked out of the cloak room into which I was hastily shoved when suddenly she arrived. She gathered the skirt of her dress in one hand as she stepped from the car, ducking under the umbrella that her sister held. She smiled, and it didn’t matter that I’d forgotten the boutonnieres.

I’m almost running now, almost home. I know she’s waited for me. We can make it last. I remember again, for the thousandth time: We can make it last.

Trifecta #33: Post One

Trifecta's going crazy on the threes for their 33rd week.

“What I tell you three times is true.” I am relieved to hear steadiness in my voice and I hope that it sounds like strength. I have no doubt the obscure literary reference will go right over his head. He doesn’t look to me to be a well-read man. Still, he has a habit of holding eye contact far too long. It’s just a tactic, I tell myself, a way to make it look like he sees far more than he possibly could. Knowing that, it’s still unnerving.

“Say it as many times as you want,” he answers. His voice is deep and flat, like a drum in a sound-proof room. “It’s still not going to work.” I see the dirt under his nails, impossibly black. I try not to speculate on the jagged scar that slices across the right side of his neck, but I can’t help myself. A knife? A rope? “You’ve never done this kind of job before.” It wasn’t a question.

“Well…” I drag the word out, feeling a stammer coming on. I swallow. “I’m still in charge of this thing.” I know I should let silence speak for me. I should turn with the confidence that he will follow, but my mouth keeps chattering on without me. “That’s what I was hired for. I’ve got the technical knowledge. The education. That’s why he put me in charge. If you’ve got a problem with that, we can call him right now.”

He doesn’t laugh, at least. But he never drops his eyes. His right hand hangs in a fist, like a stone at the end of a maul. He runs his left hand slowly down his right cheek, his little finger brushing the line of that awful scar. “You don’t look much like a Bellman to me,” he says, and my heart and my stomach change places. “Not a Butcher, either.” His eyes move down at last, then up again, slowly. “No,” he says. “A Beaver. Definitely a Beaver.”

Place

Here's 100 Words on "Place," inspired by Velvet Verbosity:


She hasn't got a place, though she could if she tried. No matter where she is, she's happier elsewhere. The fault is in the place, in the people that occupy it.

She lights another cigarette. She doesn't smoke, not really. Not anymore. It's a temporary fix. The stress is unbearable. She deserves a little outlet, no matter what they say. They don't know when to keep their mouths shut. They can't imagine what she's been through.

The baby cries. "That's got to stop," she says. I make a face. I roll my eyes. "I can't ever say anything," she says.

Osiris Waits for Her

Velvet Verbosity wants to send books around the world and hear the tales of their travels. It sounds like a fun idea to me. Here's my attempt at "Doorway:"


She stood outside the doorway, the molding pressed into her shoulder, and strained to hear something other than her own heart beating. She should go in. She knew she should. But how could she? How could she take that first step, how could she make herself reach out for the doorknob and turn it? It was an action impossible to imagine, as impossible as making herself rise from the floor and float there, bobbing like a balloon in a breeze. Instead she stood frozen, listening, waiting for the sound that would, like a starting gun, allow her to move again.

Wow, I Was WAAAYYYYY Off

I should post more. I've been busy. And Twitter makes me lazy. So in lieu of an actual post, and with the rapidly approaching anniversary of the birth of my son, I thought I'd share with you the version of a birth story I wrote when I was still in high school. Man, that kid had no idea what he was talking about.

The Birth of a Child

With a sigh and a smile, Tom flopped into the big easy chair in his study. The house was empty and silent, and to keep the mood, he neglected to turn on any lights. The sigh was from exhaustion, both physical and emotional; the smile was the only expression of utter joy left to him as he had already used every other expression he knew.

At 9:13 A.M., Tom's wife gave birth to a son. A son! The sound of the word made his heart want to burst. William Daniel Grey entered the world weighing a healthy seven pounds, nine ounces and was every bit as indignant at his arrival as a self-important politician who realizes that he has been booked at the local Motel 6. To his parents' relief, he arrived in possession of all of his parts and with all parts in proper working order. Little William's eyes, when they were not squeezed shut in a tiny tempestual rage, were a clear and brilliant blue. In Little William's father's unabashedly subjective opinion, his was the finest boy to have ever graced the planet with his presence.

Tom spent the previous twelve hours on a continuous circuit between the bedside of his wife Elizabeth and the vending machines. He had only just left a few moments before at the gentle urgings of a matronly nurse. Tom, being the coward that many men are in the area of childbirth and other mysterious female processes, had elected with his wife's approval, indeed at her suggestion, to remain in the waiting room throughout the entire ordeal. He originally had every intention of experiencing the miracle of childbirth hand-in-hand with his wife, wearing a fatherly smile on his face, but when the time had actually arrived, Elizabeth had seen Tom's face turn ashen and had heard the strength drain from his voice, so she mercifully suggested that he remain outside.

Tom then spent the ungodly and unbearably long three hours in a cold sweat. He unconsciously fit every stereotype of the nervous first-time father to perfection by pacing continuously and talking to himself for the duration. His nerves were drawn pianowire-tight, and his nervous energy was at an all-time high. Tom did nothing to remedy this situation, and in fact spent most of the three hours pouring sugar into his bloodstream in the form of Hershey's, Life Savers, and Coca-Cola. Only the mercy of God kept him from collapsing into a diabetic coma.

At last the moment arrived. Tom's heart skipped a few beats when a small, somewhat mousy-looking nurse stuck her head into the waiting room and asked, "Mr. Grey?" Tom nearly jumped on her, making her flinch, with a myriad of questions at his lips, each so important that he was at a loss as to which to ask first. The nurse merely asked him to follow her, saying nothing else. She walked abominably slowly, and Tom realized that she was enjoying herself. Apparently this was the part of her job that she loved the most: watching the poor, tortured fathers squirm with anticipation.

Knowing this, Tom tried, but was unable, to calm himself and to end the ceaseless babble that was issuing forth from his lips. Without realizing that he was doing it, and in a period of mere moments, Tom managed to tell this amused nurse the entire history of The Romance of Tom and Elizabeth. With something similar to awe, Tom listened to the words flow out, unbidden by any human will.

The walk from the waiting room stretched on and on; Tom had never walked so far. The sterile, white halls stretched on to infinity, and a helpless Tom, feeling detached from his body and floating in some ethereal fluid, watched himself amble along, babbling contentedly.

At long last the nurse opened one of the hollow, wooden doors and ushered Thomas into the room. At this point, Tom's heart did not just skip a beat, it nearly stopped altogether. His wife was in the plain, white, hospital bed, smiling at him with a look of expectancy on her face. She held a baby; their baby. His face and his mind both went blank, and his wife could suddenly read no emotion in his face or eyes. Then his shock broke, and his eyes filled with wonder. In a breathless whisper he asked, "A boy?"

She nodded, laughing and crying, and held the boy up to meet his father. Tom took the baby with all the awkward care that befits a new father. In Tom's eyes, the boy seemed to be surrounded by a hazy glow, an aura. The father held his son for a time and thought of personal things. Eventually he looked around as if waking from a dream and went to his wife's side.

"William?" he asked as he handed the child reluctantly back to the mother.

"Hey! I thought we had decided on Daniel," she replied.

"William Daniel it is, then," spoke a voice from the corner. Tom looked up to see his mother-in-law, previously unnoticed in his understandably emotional condition. He went to her and gave her a hug, whispering "I'm a father!" in her ear.

And thus it was decided. William Daniel Grey. The rest of the day Tom spent in a haze; first he watched his wife feed the child and then went on a tour of the hospital, telling everyone he met that he was a father. Finally, when both his wife and his son were safely sleeping, a large and motherly nurse quietly suggested that he go home and get some sleep, all the while gently leading him toward the door.

So Tom went home. His troubles were only beginning, he knew. Would he be a good father? Would he do all the right things at all the right times? How was he going to get Little William through college? His were happy troubles, though, and he fell asleep in his big easy chair in his dark, empty house with his car keys in his hand, still smiling.

How To Watch Your Father Sleep

Guest blog entry from Mrs. Rodius...

You really don't want to read this. I've been thinking about my father a lot lately. Fitting, since it was recently Father's Day. But, this started several weeks ago.

As I mentioned in my last guest blog, Thumper's been vocalizing more these days and he often talks about "Bob." He bob, bob, bob, bob, bobs so often that The Man and I have decided Bob must be Thumper's imaginary friend, and he often blames Bob for the things that crash! And, Bob is the reason why Thumper does some of the things that he should not...Bob told him to. My dad was Bob, and I lost him a long time ago now. Some say that imaginary friends aren't imaginary at all...that they are some other force or form or spirit. I don't know...the thought has struck me, though.

It makes me sad that Thumper will never know him and that my father will never have the chance to meet the little guy I'm so proud of. He was far from perfect, but he was that dad running like mad away from the sewer he'd just dropped an M-80 down (on the 4th of July) as all of us neighborhood kids cheered on. Boom! Ha ha ha ha ha!

The Man recently resurrected some old writing we'd stored on floppy disk. Floppy disks...yep! I came across this. One of my writing professors used to have us do free writing exercises to start class. She'd give us a topic and we'd just start writing. It was an exercise in free-flow writing. I believe this day must have been "What if..." Excuse how rough it is. I never went back to flesh it out, though that was the idea behind the free-flow writing.

How To Watch Your Father Sleep

What if when you were nine years old your dog died? She'd have been german shepherd and husky and her name would have been Kelly, and she'd have been the first thing in your life to go and die on you. What would you do? You might cry a bit and think about the time when you were out riding your bicycle (and Kelly was outside too because there wasn't a leash law then) and Mikey Powell came up and stood in front of you and wouldn't let you by. You would remember that you had been too scared to do anything when he pushed you off your bike, but Kelly had rescued you. She'd charged at him barking and barking, and you knew she didn't bite, but Mikey had run away, the piss scared out of him.

And what would you do if you found out years later that all day long your mother thought she heard the dog whining on the back porch where your parents had hidden her the morning they found her cold as stone on the kitchen floor? They would have done this so you wouldn't know until after you had come home from school that day. Parents do that kind of thing. If Kelly had been your goldfish, they would have bought you another and secretly switched it with Kelly thinking you wouldn't know the difference, trying to spare you this pain. But a dog would have been much more difficult to switch, so it was the back porch until they could get rid of her.

"I kept thinking I heard her crying on the porch," your mother will tell you one day when you are older as you sit in the kitchen drinking coffee with her and some of her friends. "I kept going out there to check and I'd say 'Kelly?', but it was just my imagination."

You won't be mad or sad when she says this, having long since gotten over it. You will think it's eerie and let the words pass away with the rest of the small talk. It will come back to you though, this thought.

Because when you were twelve, just a few years after Kelly, you would stumble groggily into the kitchen to find your father as gray as modeling clay sitting at the breakfast table. He'd be sweaty and cold and you'd watch, unable to move, as he turned to your mother and said "I think I better go to the hospital."

What would you do if you heard this from a man who refused to take so much as an aspirin when he had a headache? You won't be able to remember a single day when you shivered more, even though it was June. Your mother would come home from the hospital, alone and crying. She would continue to cry as she called all of your relatives to say that Bob had had a heart attack and they don't know if it means surgery or not but that she needed everyone's support and couldn't some of them take one or two of the kids for a while if she needed them to?

You wouldn't know what to do that night or when two months, one more heart attack and by-pass surgery later, he finally came home from the hospital. Your mother might tell you what you have to do. You musn't upset him and you kids musn't fight in front of him and your father won't be allowed to do heavy lifting anymore, so if you're a boy, you must do it for him. You might do it for him anyway, even if you are a girl.

You would have only gone to visit your father once while he was in the hospital because you had gotten so upset that one time that your mother didn't think it was a good idea for you to go again. You wouldn't have been able to say much or even look at your father with all those wires and tubes attached to him and that machine that beeped in time with his heart. Your father would have noticed you staring out the window and would have called you over to him to explain to you what each tube and wire was for and to tell you that he was going to be okay. And you'd have choked trying not to cry because you were ashamed. Ashamed because you're not supposed to upset someone in I.C.U. and because he was the one in need, not you.

Once your father was home from the hospital, you'd begin to notice that you watched him a lot more than you ever used to. He'd be lying on the couch taking a nap after work and you'd stop suddenly, your face tingling and fear cementing all of your joints and you'd stare. You'd stare, but then you would relax and tell yourself yes, he was breathing. You'd get really good at scaring yourself this way. You'd practice different methods of ignoring other sounds, the television, a car passing on the street. It would be a game almost, a kind of art, shutting out all other noises just to hear his breathing. This is how you watch your father sleep.

And years would pass and your father's health would continue to deteriorate and all new complications would develop, too many sicknesses for one man. You would wonder why he refused to quit smoking and why he couldn't seem to stick to the doctor's diet. You wonder how long a death can be carried out. You would think it's strange as you stood outside his bedroom door listening, that he goes to bed earlier than you now. Yes, he was breathing and it was just your imagination. But no matter how many times you tell yourself this, you can never make it stop. You always find yourself straining, holding your own breath to listen for his.

Vindication

Ah, see? I don't have to like it if I don't want to.

What Was the Deal With That Sex and Death Thing, Anyway?

Yeah, maybe it was kinda out there for this forum. I started this blog because I'd been reading a lot of blogs, and it seemed like a good way to motivate myself to write more, meet some good people, and, well, ok, have some total strangers tell me how clever and funny I am.

So then PureLight posted something she'd written awhile back, and I thought, "I should post an old story of mine, too." And then a friend was a little more open in an email than I expected her to be, and then anniemcq went and told the internet a little something personal. So I thought, wow, Internet, our relationship is really starting to evolve. Maybe it's time to let it all hang out!

So anyway, it's a piece of fiction I wrote a couple of years ago and failed to sell to a couple of different magazines. I figured putting it out in the world might give me more motivation to write more. I haven't written fiction like I used to in a long time. But just so I don't start creeping you out, yes, it is fiction. No, I did not start writing to death row inmates. I don't own any dirty DVD's that I can leave in the DVD player. Mrs. Rodius and I are in a wonderful place in our marriage. Please do not feel obligated to call Child Protective Services on me to take custody of Thumper after he's born.

Please don't think too hard about what may or may not be true in that story, otherwise we'll have to avoid eye contact in the hallways and elevators of the Internet and pretend this never happened.

So, uh... How 'bout them Longhorns?

Epistolary Evidence in the Death of Sex

The wife wouldn’t understand if I joined a dating service. At least, I wouldn’t think so. And that’s how she’d think of it: a dating service. Any normal person would. I know I would, if she did it.

But it’s not a date I’m looking for, just correspondence. I haven’t corresponded with anyone in what seems like a lifetime, like somebody else’s lifetime. Least of all the wife. If I did join a service, I’m sure I could never keep it from her. I’m a poor keeper of secrets and mysteries. I sometimes forget to take the dirty movies out of the DVD player when I’m done, though I can usually be counted on to dispose of the tissues. If I joined, she’d know. She’d see the credit card charge, or stumble across an email. And if I could explain it to her, really tell her the truth, then I wouldn’t need a dating service at all.

It’s only been three days, and I’m already going crazy. How about you? I can’t wait for spring semester to start. Did I really live here? It seems like years, not months. Every night, my mom asks me where I’m going and when I’ll be back. I don’t know how she survived an entire semester without knowing what time I went to bed! I miss you and all my friends so much, I can’t wait for Christmas to be over!

While she was working late, I decided to do a little research. No, that’s not true. I decided days before and was waiting, waiting. The search engine was waiting, too. If it remembered me, and maybe it did, it would expect any moment to fetch me back pictures of naked celebrities: a flash of white panties exiting the limo, grainy nipples on a European beach. The cursor was ready, and even patient. It blinked, blinked, blinked, and I watched it with my fingers on the keyboard. I got up and went to the bathroom. I came back, and it was still blinking, still patient and perhaps non-judgmental. I went to the kitchen and drank a beer in front of the open refrigerator door, almost hearing the metronomic patience of the prompt as it waited in the other room. I drank two more beers that way. Finally I sat down and typed “pen pal.” “Submit,” it said. So I did.

Surprise! I hope you use your Western Civ book today. Otherwise, when you sell it back to the bookstore, some guy next year will find a little love note inside, no extra charge! I wanted to think about you thinking about me today, and smiling. Are you still smiling? I can’t seem to stop. You said you never thought of us except as friends. You said you’re no smoothie. Margaritas and a massage after work? You can’t fool me, that was no innocent offer! What did you think would happen? Not that I’m complaining!

“Did you mean ‘penpal’?” it asked me snobbishly. I’m sure it’s two words, really, but I agreed. “Penpal” was indeed what I meant. I’d even thank it for correcting me, if that’s what it wanted. There’s no profit, I’ve learned, in arguing with The Internet.

Quite pleased with itself, it presented me a list of 124,825 web pages for people seeking the joys of correspondence. I clicked on the first, then went back to the second, then to the third.

I know you need the overtime if you’re going to save enough to get back into school, but I missed our little meeting this morning. With you working nights, we get so little time together. Five minutes on a subway platform and a kiss goodbye. I think about it all day. It seems so clandestine, meeting in the subway, that I almost feel like we’re having an affair. I wait with all those people who don’t know about us, don’t know that I’m waiting for you. My heart flutters a little more with each train that comes in. Then you’re there, holding my hand – then my train comes – too long for yours, too soon for mine! We steal a quick kiss, and we’re off in our different directions again. I think about those minutes all day long, waiting for the next one. If only our trains crossed in the evenings, too, I’d have two kisses a day to keep the cold, cold wind from chapping my lips!

Dating services, mostly. As I expected. Friendship was usually third or fourth on the list of goals the sample satisfied customers had for their foray into the world of correspondence. It seems like people would want to start with friendship. That’s what we did, a hundred years ago, when we met. I forgot all of that, the beginning. I remembered the Story, the Genesis Tale, the history become mythology, but I forgot the experience itself until I found the box in the garage. It had all of them, His and Hers, the letters, the notes, the cards. Our correspondence.

“If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ‘twas but a dream of thee.”

I awoke with a smile, pleasantly surprised as always to find you there, curled up next to me. You were still asleep, so warm and soft that I reached out to touch your cheek, almost before I realized I was doing it.

Lightly, very lightly, I traced the tips of my fingers along your neck to your shoulder, wanting to kiss the soft, white hollow of your neck but not wanting to shift the bed and wake you. Already I felt familiar stirrings that rise so easily at just the thought of you.

You lay on your side, facing me, your arm across your naked breasts, your legs drawn up beneath the quilt. I slipped my hand beneath the covers, running my fingers slowly past your shoulder, down your side, and, and into the maddening curve of your hip. I thought I saw the faintest trace of a smile on your lips. Were you only pretending now to sleep?

As I moved down your hip and around to follow the rounded line of your ass, I was fully aroused, fully awake. The warmth, the feel of your skin beneath my hand, and memories of the night before were enough. I dragged my fingernails lightly down the back of your thigh, and you turned, a sleeper changing her position, shifting onto her back in mid-dream. Now I knew you, too, were awake, but still you pretended...

By the time I finished the six-pack, I was reading descriptions of women in prison. Some even had glamour shots, presumably taken before they were incarcerated. I paused for a moment, imagining myself as the photographer at a prison glamour shot studio. The fantasy wouldn’t develop.

A serial killer, I thought. That has promise. I do admire strong women. Serial killers are likely to be on death row, and death row inmates are unlikely to show up at the front door while I’m having dinner with the wife. And better a serial killer than a battered, embittered woman who set her husband on fire. Were there any women serial killers? I didn’t know. They’re supposed to be smart, though. Crazy too, sure, but maybe crazy doesn’t come off in correspondence like it does face to face. Antisocial. Maybe She wouldn’t write back. Egotistical. She probably would. Maybe I won’t even read Her letters. I wanted to write, was beginning to feel like I had to write, but the thought of reading didn’t give me the same pulling sensation in my chest.

Ah, but I’d have to read Her letters to know whether or not She’d understood. Understood? No. Pitied? No. A nameless, faceless She, absorbing me through Her eyes. Drawing me in, liquid on a sponge. If ever I got caught, then I’d think about why and chastise myself for such a pointless, dangerous act. But this was the time for the heat of the act itself.

The Internet is chock full of nuts, sure, but how would I find a female serial killer who wanted to be a penpal? That’s probably too specific a fetish. I thought about the pornography I’ve downloaded and realized that no, correspondence with murderers was probably pretty tame stuff. Probably even has its own name, something Japanese or German. And I’d heard of women writing to men in prison, women falling in love and marrying those men. But would men seek women? I smiled at the ridiculous question. Of course they would. Men would go pretty far for good masturbation material. I decided to write the letter first, then find its recipient later.

Roommates! I don’t want to have roommates anymore – I just want you! They eat my food, they don’t pay their phone bills, and they let their drunken friends sleep in my bed when I’m working! Two months seems like a lot of days to count, but I am. I’m counting them down one by one until summer comes at last and we can make a home together. I don’t know how we’re going to look for an apartment together, though. Do realtors work on weekends?

I pulled a blank sheet of paper from the printer. I type faster than I write, but I didn’t want any sort of record on the computer for the wife to stumble across. I knew the lines of my thought would curve across the unlined pages, as if the writing would spiral in on itself on a large enough page. I took a blue pen from the desk drawer, then replaced it with a black one. Black seemed more official. On the top of the page, I wrote, “June 4.” I thought about opening another beer.

I know you’re tired of this schedule. I’m tired of it too. It’s hard to have a relationship when I only see you when you’re blow-drying your hair before you run off to school, or coming through the door from your job while I’m going out the door to mine. We should put in a revolving door; we’d have less risk of cracking our skulls together coming and going. We have our weekends: grocery shopping, housework and homework, and bus trips home to see your family. I’m trying to get off this damned night shift, but the only way it’s going to happen is if someone quits or gets fired. It’ll happen, I swear; you’ve just got to hang in there with me. It’s still you and me, right? You and me against the world?

“Last night she said to me, ‘I don’t know what changed, or why, and I’m sorry. But, well, I don’t want to swallow anymore.’ She paused, and then, in case it hadn’t been enough to get the job done, she added, ‘I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time.’ I can feel it still, like a punch, two punches, in the belly. I can’t even write the words without squinting my eyes and baring my teeth.

“It’s been a long, costly war of attrition, and I’m running out of allies. I almost cry reading the casualty reports. The Kitchen Counter. The Bathroom Floor. Standing. Sitting. Wednesday Afternoon. Tuesday Morning. If Friday and Saturday Night fall, I will truly be without a friend in the world. And now Fellatio, critically, mortally, wounded. Alas, poor Fellatio! I knew him, Yorick… Here hung those lips, that I have kissed I know not how oft…

“Are you married? You may know what I mean. In the wedding announcements, the plastic smiles of people who can’t yet see the trajectory of their marriage look remarkably similar to the plastic smiles in the obituaries of people who can’t yet see the detonation of their lives. I certainly didn’t see it coming.

“I’m jerking off almost daily now, even two or three times in a day. I’ve outpaced my adolescent self, the boy who dreamed sweaty, sticky dreams of the geometry teacher outside whose door daily gathered the coaches of football, and baseball, the teachers of history and shop. Now I am the man, not the boy, and I know that the yearning ache in the chest and beneath it never went away for them either, those nervous, laughing coaches and teachers: the ache for a smile, a glance, a glimpse of lace between shirt buttons, a flash of white thigh beneath the hem of a skirt.

“Almost fifteen years married, I should be past all that, past the hidden pornography, past the extra-long showers, past the driving home from the office in the middle of the day for “lunch.” I should be settled comfortably into a routine of sedate twice-monthly lovemaking, a slight upturning at the corners of my lips where once there was wild laughter and mischievous grins. I am ashamed to remember that I used to tease my poor, lonely, single friends, when they rolled their eyes at my folly, marrying so young. I laughed at them, laughed that marriage was sex on tap, and I could pour myself a glass any time, any time at all. I knock on the empty keg now, a hollow thunk, and think ruefully of my pride. The tap has run dry.

“I used to think that Sex was not dying, just ailing from time to time as we all do. It was supposed to be, as the books and the scholars say, cyclical. Peaks and valleys. I am not so foolish that I believe that happiness can be maintained for any length of time, but I did believe that, though it would go, it would always come back around again, as sure as Halley’s Comet, but on a shorter orbit. I thought it was axiomatic: sex doesn’t die, it just winters in the sunnier climes.

“I have the letters, the evidence. They go back almost to the day we met, a story that I didn’t know we were writing since I only saw it a word, or a phrase, or a sentence at a time. Would you like to read them? They do not point to murder, I think – nothing so deliberate or pre-meditated as that. We could, both of us, be charged with reckless endangerment instead. Neglect, perhaps, but not abuse. There are a stack of them here, the letters, some still folded in their envelopes, some scratched on yellow notepads faded white, some on white paper wilted yellow. You can see our scribbles and doodles, sketches and coffee rings, poems and songs stuffed into the margins. I’ll send some next time, or maybe some excerpts. For you to look at. For you to see.

We should be talking about this in person, but when I tried, you walked out on me. I’m sorry this is hard for you. It’s hard for me too. I’ve finally found a therapist I really like, and I think I’m on the verge of something powerful now, something liberating. But to get there, to really deal with my past, I have to shut that part down right now. I know it’s important to you. It’s important to me too. But I can’t do both, I just can’t. I hope you understand. I’ve dredged up so much ancient history lately, and I can’t stand the idea of thinking about that history when you’re touching me. I don’t want that between us, too. I hope you won’t pressure me, or resent me for it. I know it’s hard, and I understand if you can’t stay with me through this. I love you, and I always will, even if you choose to go.

I read through the letter once and smiled. It was clever, I thought. Clever and well-written, particularly the little turn on Shakespeare. I read through it again. It wasn’t much of a letter, though. Not really. There was no “how are you, I am fine.” It didn’t matter. Some random Woman, sitting in a tiny room, maybe windowless, as She opened the envelope. Would She really care to hear what I look like, or how I twisted my ankle mowing the lawn last week? Probably not. She’d care to hear it even less than I’d care to tell it, most likely. It wasn’t important. Only an idiot twists his ankle mowing the lawn.

When I get back from Mom’s next weekend, we’ll talk. I think what we need, what we both need, might be a vacation. A change of venue, a breath of fresh air to clear out all the old dust and debris and help us start over again. I’ve always wanted to spend a week or two on white sand beaches, not doing anything. It seems like we’re always doing something.

“Women prison penpals,” I submitted. Not quite so smug this time, it returned a list of only 2, 689. I should have known: babesbehindbars.com. Alliteration is always good in marketing, no matter what you were selling. At least the prices seemed reasonable. Some charged a monthly subscription, some charged per address. The payment problem again, I thought. Yes, that’s definitely how I’m going to get caught.

milk
bread
cat food
fabric softener
cigarettes

In the end, though, I narrowed the search (“death row women free penpals”,) and discovered that death row inmates were a special breed of prison penpals, Anti-death penalty organizations were handing out their names and addresses for free to anybody that would take them. They even gave out helpful statistics, like age, interests, even religious preferences. No glamour shots, though. And what pictures there were had no smiles in them. Maybe nobody writes to a happy death row inmate. I tried to picture what kind of person would choose this as a hobby, and I couldn’t. Freaks and weirdos, I’m sure. They say it takes all kinds.

You’re not getting old... That was last year! Have a fantastic birthday!

I settled at last on a woman in Virginia who was fifty-six, enjoyed singing, had no religious preference, and spoke English. I was meticulous addressing the envelope, carefully following the instructions and checking and re-checking her prisoner number. As I was writing, I imagined the wife, pulling an envelope from the mailbox, “Insufficient Postage” in giant red letters across my neat printing. I put two extra stamps on the envelope.

For three weeks, I sweated nervously and tried to think of a lie I could tell that would make her stop checking the mail. I couldn’t. But in the end, she carried it in with a couple of bills. I needn’t have worried. She left the envelope on the kitchen counter for me. She never even asked me what it was, showed no curiosity at all. I took the envelope into the bathroom. My hands were shaking. The wife had touched the envelope. Now I was touching it. I let the water run. I flushed the toilet. I pictured the wife outside in the hall, listening. I didn’t picture her wondering why the sink was already running when I flushed.

Inside was my own letter. I couldn’t fathom what this meant; was it returned for excessive postage? I unfolded it, stared for a second or two without reading, without even really seeing. Then I turned over the first page. Written with red ink in generic, draftsman’s print was:

YOU KNOW THEY’RE GOING TO KILL ME, RIGHT?

I turned over the second page. In equally tidy print was:

BY THE WAY, I’M NOT GETTING LAID EITHER.

I dropped both pages and the torn envelope into the toilet. I flushed again. Then I washed my hands.