“So, I’m just a living fantasy for you, a three-dimensional centerfold, that’s all… right?”
“Well, yeah, that’s right.”
“What about my smells then, Steve ? Can you smell the musk of me?” Her hands are back now, churning her flow into cream. “Come on, I can see you’re affected, don’t you know how all this tastes, smelling my pussy, and my naughty, forbidden asshole?”
She laughs before I can respond, “It wouldn’t really be sex if you took your dick out and played with it, while you’re watching me, would it? After all, I’m just a magazine fantasy, right?”
I don’t say a word, reaching for one of her cigarettes, attempting to hide my nervousness. As I light up, I haven’t smoked at this point for years, Joan continues:
“I’m going to suck your balls. I’m going to slide my tongue in and out of your ass. I want you to spank me raw… to pinch my nipples hard… harder, as you butt-fuck me…I want you to pull it out, and finish in my mouth.”
“…I love my wife,” is the best I can do under the circumstances. I push my chair back against the wall, struggling to get up.
“You’re lying to yourself” she chides.
“I’ve lied to everyone else all my life,” I say, “why shouldn’t I lie to myself?” As I approach her bed, my body is shaking, sodden with sweat. I don’t bother to pull the covers off, I don’t remember hitting the mattress, only the slow motion falling, falling…
I jump awake, my erection is a painful reminder of the vivid dream.
“Jesus,” I say to my bathroom reflection. I’m so hard, it hurts to push my cock down and coax it to pee. “Man, what was that all about,” thinking aloud again, doing more of that nowadays, in empty hotel rooms. Splashing cold water on my face, a mixture of guilt, pride and loneliness affect me, and I start to cry, alone in my room.
Home Again
“Folding wash is all the therapy I need,” I realize, angry at the lateness of the revelation. Geri is the only one really trying, and I’m marking time, getting by, quits.
Except for Elton John singing about (or to) Daniel in the background, I’m alone in the house. I stopped folding the wash, thinking that “the seeds of our own destruction, or the seeds of our own salvation are always within us.”
Geri and I had worked out at the gym together, yet apart, not in itself significant. Dropping her off at her therapist, Dr. Levine’s office, came the question I’d been anticipating for a long while…."will you take therapy together, if I ask Levine?”
“No, I don’t believe in that shit,” I blurt out. “Well, if it means saving our marriage or something, of course I’ll come talk to him with you,” I say now as I see Geri’s face clouding up.
“Been there, done that,” I think, pulling away. All I could really think, escaping the situation, was that people say things to each other in the presence of a therapist that might not be conducive to keeping a relationship going. “ I don’t feel like having sex; maybe I don’t feel like having sex with you; maybe we don’t like each other so much anymore.”
I know there is no fucking way I’m going to let this relationship reach separation or divorce, but it has more to do with Kiley, than what my relationship with Geri has become. All these thoughts blow through my consciousness, register, resonate and are instantly suppressed back into the soup of my unwanted feelings. These thoughts are there and gone before I reach the first traffic light.
I breathe a sigh of relief just to be away, on my own in the car, (the Captain, in control?).
Now, after one more fight in the car (from the Doctor to Geri’s job), after making fun of the simplistic drivel Geri’s picked up from Levine (have more sex, put more fun in your life as a substitute for overeating, drinking), I’ve got her in tears, with my “No shit, but what about ‘you don’t feel like having sex,’ or ‘you don’t feel like having sex with someone you don’t particularly care for as a person?” Just my sarcastic tone, even before my unfortunate logic, deflates Geri before my eyes. Shit, she’s crying and unhappy again.
“Look, we’ve got to try to communicate. We’ve got to spend more time with each other, not just sit in front of the TV every night,” Geri manages, drying out her nose, wiping her tears.
“First we have to come to like each other again as people and then as friends again,” I volunteer. “That requires thinking the best, not the worst, of the other person’s motivations. I’ve always thought only the best about your motivations, but when there’s a need to make assumptions, you only think the worst of me,” I point out accusingly.
“We have to work on it,” we both agree, as she gets out of the car to go to work.
Jesus. Driving home, it’s all washing through my mind, unbidden. I am happier away from her, and from Kiley, for that matter… what’s the deal?
Home now, folding the wash, revelation hits. I feel personally, solely responsible to pay the bills, to make it all work somehow. I’m facing a shortening deadline of pilot earnings sneaking quickly up on me, driving me crazy. I cannot relax, I cannot enjoy my wife and daughter, since they are a living reminder of my problem, the mirror always reflecting my nightmare back at me… I run from that mirror.
Finally it all comes clear. Geri is the only one who has been trying to improve this impossible situation. I’ve been trying to “save my family,” the big picture, but I’m destroying it in the process. I’ve allowed my encapsulated thoughts and feelings to isolate me from Geri. I’ve worsened the situation by not trying to improve it, avoiding, just trying to let it all go by… Rodney King’s wimpy “can’t we all just get along.”
Holy shit, I’ve really fucked up. Why should I pass the days trying to skip by, waiting to be called out to fly, passively hoping that my marriage and my family holds together? Why not actively participate in improvement? Am I uncaring? No. Lazy? Yes. “An object at rest tends to want to remain at rest.”
“I hope it’s not too late” I think, wishing Geri were here so that I could immediately share these thought with her.
Back on the Job
Charlie Extra-Pickles is driving me nuts, trying to load the waypoints into the I.N.S.’s.
“Jesus, Charlie, you’re trying to help me, but you fuck up my flow. Now I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing…”
I sense Jerry Lovell starting to smile behind me, as I hear all the familiar clicking and buzzing of his engineer panel pre-flight check.
“Jerry, how many Captains you know fuck with the I.N.S.’s?”
“‘Extra-Pickles’ is the only one I know, wants to be one of the boys.” Jerry adds to the shit we’re heaping on Charlie Pickles.
We’re all grinning, this is a great crew; professional, but laid back, looking forward to each other’s company, as we anticipate our layover in Athens.
“Keshy,” (fake indignation now in Charlie’s high-pitched nasal voice), “…I’m not trying to help you, I’m trying to remember how to use these things.”
“Right, Charlie. Charlie, the registered pharmacist in three states, the military instructor pilot in 130’s, you’re trying to remember how to load the I.N.S.’s… give me a break.”
With the preflight done, the fuel on board and confirmed by Jerry’s computations and the gauges, we get the checklist out of the way and brief the Canarsie departure.
“Holy shit, no interruptions.” Charlie beams. It’s true, normally some galley slave, ramp guy or gate agent comes barging in during our challenge and responses, spewing bullshit, and we usually have to start all over again.
The amber cargo door lights tell us we still have time to kill. “How’re Geri, and my baby Kiley?”