__________________________________________________________________

Marriage Talk 6

Hey, he thought,

so long as you’re pretending,

why not pretend that, too.

But, “No,” he said,

“you don’t have to ‘become a screamer’!

But once in a while

I’d like to know that you

enjoy making love to me!

Occasionally a deep breath would be nice.

Shit!” he said emphatically.

“Sometimes I don’t even know if you’re awake!”

A man, the wife thought,  

a real man is supposed to know that stuff!

A real man wouldn’t have to be told how

to make a woman happy!

“Okay, yeah,

I know sometimes I ‘come’ fast,

but that’s the reason I like to take

as much time as I do doing other stuff,

like, uh… you know.

And you know

I try real hard not to ‘come’ too fast.”

“Yeah,” she quipped,

“like reciting the Gettysburg Address.”

The mood lightened somewhat,

“Yeah!” Smiling in the darkness,

he remembered once,

during intercourse,

when he had attempted to last longer

by trying to take his mind off

what he was doing

and where ‘he’ was,

when thinking he

was only thinking began saying:

“Four score and seven years ago…”

But he wasn’t ‘only’ thinking and

she had heard him…

and both laughed over it when ‘through’..

This remembrance was thought

of in a jocular sense for the young man

and, so he thought, for his wife also.

To the young woman, though,

the Gettysburg Address was

but one of a growing

list of reasons for her

rationalization of the way

she then felt towards her husband

and for her lack of emotion, passion, enjoyment

and any communication regarding their sex life.

“The problem is,” she said,

“you don’t understand how I feel!

You won’t even try to understand how I feel!”

“Bull­shit!

I do want to understand!

Tell me.” Said sincerely,

 “Please!”

The wife said, “Okay, I will.” Adding,

 “But this isn’t meant to start a fight!”

“I want to know.

I really want to know!

And if there’s anything I can do to change things,”

—anything to live what he considered being a normal life—

“I promise you, I’ll try!”

Hesitating a number of seconds, then,

her floodgate of antagonism open,

her words tinged with anger,

“First off,

—and I’m just mentioning it because I

want to get it off my chest—

Marriage Talk 7

“First off,

—and I’m just mentioning it because I

want to get it off my chest—

you know how I feel about you

not looking for a part-time job!”

Sighing,

“I thought this was supposed to be about our sex life?”

The young husband said, adding.

“Besides, you know business is getting better

and more money will be coming soon.”

“Yeah,”

Hating to agree,

so quickly changing the subject,

“And no, this conversation is not ‘just’ about our sex life!

This conversation is about ‘everything’ that’s bothering me…”

Thinking, Oh, God.

“Okay,” he said,

“so tell me ‘everything’ that’s bothering you.”

Hesitating a number of long seconds,

“I think you’re a coward!”

the young wife said.

“Huh?”

Coming from way out in left field,

the words initially shocking more

than hurting. “I’m a ‘coward’?”

the young husband questioned.

“Yeah,” she said vehemently,

“a ‘coward’!

I really think if we were out somewhere

and if I were attacked you’d run away

rather than stay and fight to protect me!”

“How can you say that?”

The young man asked incredulously,

“How can you even…”

Considering himself a ‘gentle person’,

the young man would go out of his way

to avoid a verbal or physical confrontation.

But even if he were a coward,

to his knowledge he’d never given

her any indication that he would leave her

in any sort of a dangerous situation,

so why should she think it?

“How can you say that?”

The young man asked incredulously,

“How can you even think that?”

“For one thing,”

 the wife answered,

“ ‘Ruby’.” ***

“ ‘Ruby’?”

The young man questioned,

“You really think I should have gone to ‘Little Rock’ with Ruby?”

“He’s your friend,”

she said,

“and he asked you to go.”

“I’ve a family to support!”

“You think I should have just taken off?”

He asked seriously,

“Yeah, in that case I did!”

“And if I’d have gotten hurt or arrested?”

Hitting on his wife’s ‘sore subject’

“Were you ready to go to work

to bring some money in?”

Evading the question,

“I think you should have gone!

But okay,

I’ve other reasons to think you’re a coward.”

“Tell me, please!”

To be continued

©April 23, 2012 / Mark M. Lichterman