"A man needed to be able to ejaculate
as often as possible
in the shortest space of time
to avoid being caught by predators ..."
Barbara & Allan Pease, "Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps"
A strong pair of hands grabbed Fanny's generous hips and pulled her back from the waffle batter. Her husband growled as he bounced his pelvis insistently against the soft, womanly cushions of her bottom. Then raising his snout to the Comanche moon, he broke into the haunting yip-yip-yip of the high-plains coyote.
Waylaying and dry-humping his wife -- and, for that matter, maids, waitresses, meter maids, baby sitters, female underlings at work, the smaller male underlings (and their spouses) -- "stallion-style" was Hubert’s signature trademark. A sophisticated way for a powerful man, uncomfortable with effeminate emotions, to yet express certain feelings of affection and possession. On weekends and holidays, Fanny could barely flit from one room to another without being pinned against the plasma screen, Louis Quatorze escritoire or the humongous Damien-Hirst Hippopotalope-in-Formadaldehyde installation.
After twenty-eight years, she was frankly tired of this once-frolicsome game -- first sprung, to great mutual excitement, during their second date in the monkey house at the zoo. Now it only fed her claustrophobia and panic attacks, and Fanny found herself fantasizing about payback, just and joyous retribution. With the hedge-trimmer. Then Louise loaned her Professor Dworkin's feminist masterwork, "Women Are Goddesses from Lesbos & Men Thugs from the Tar Pit," and the pieces fell into place: the dyed hair plugs; the stupid-looking goatee; the Rolexes; the expensive, foreign dick-mobiles -- and the flickerings of terror glimpsed within Hubert's glazed eyes when dry-humping events occurred in front of mirrors, the subzero, the formaldehyde tank and the larger chrome fixtures.
This was no light-spirited game between consulting adults. Uh uh. According to Dworkin, her husband was trapped in a pointless Darwinian race on the hamster wheel of grunting testosterone-compulsion. Hubert, though a senior partner in Silverman Baggs’ Patsy-Fucking Department XI (Wealth Redirection), had as much free will in the matter as their schnauzer Rufus with the grubby, hair-matted pillow he mounted regularly in mindless, panting paroxysms of joyless canine monomania. (Usually at Fanny’s Christian Book Club meetings.) Aha! thought Fanny, tiptoeing around Daddy's basement "Op Center" with its antique shotguns and Cuban cigars; the libraries of Tom Clancies, Ayn Rands and Peeping Tom videos. The poster of Sarah Palin in six-guns and thong. And…what’s this? Another grubby, hair-matted pillow? In front of an autographed picture of Blackstone billionaire Stephen Schwarzman? But Rufus wasn't even allowed in here...
Oh, Hubert, no! Fanny gulped back a little bit of regurgitated tea cake.
This dreadful peek-a-boo into the nightcrawler bucket of her husband's psyche filled her with sadness, guilt, disgust -- and an overwhelming sense of futility. Still, Fanny wanted to do the right thing. Support her man in his "life’s work” of frantic accumulation. So she started reacting to his ambushes with a heifer-like lowing, rich in animal gratification; or shrill, piglike squealings of wild alarm; or cheerful ejaculations of "Ride 'em, cowpoke!" and "Whoops-a-daisy, Mr. Blankfein!"
That seemed to feed something deep within her husband and calm him down for a few blessed hours of peace. Fortunately, Hubert couldn't see the expression on her face on these occasions, which most resembled the anguished expressions found on East Orthodox icons of the major martyrs.
But Fanny knew that a lot of other Wall Street wives would be flattered, if not jubilant, to be dry-humped after so many years of marriage. She could see it in their defeated eyes over girl-talk: those eyes said Fanny should stop complaining and start counting her blessings.
"the male African baboon ... mates for between 10 and 20 seconds
and gives just four to eight pelvic thrusts per mating"
Ibid
"How dare you wear this sluttish negligee in the daylight hours?" He hissed, bumping away against the back of her old, threadbare house-dress.
Per the wifely reckoning, she had neither seen nor felt an actual erection since hubby's last bout with the flu -- when waking up in the middle of the night, half-deranged from a double dose of Extra-Strength Nyquil PM, he had transported her to a sweaty, fantastical pleasure dome for three deliriously delicious hours. Five months later, she still became dreamy over the feverish clutching of his moist digits, the blind fixity of his eager, carp-like mouth, and his peculiar insistence on calling her "Mammy." He had been so terribly demanding, even petulant, about what he needed -- things he had never requested before -- all described in obscenely visceral detail in lisping, hiccupping baby-talk.
Despite the case made in Dworkin’s second book (“Lady Galadriel & the Orcs: The Unnatural Grotesquerie of Intercourse between the Sexes”), Fanny realized she liked this particular experience very much. (For that matter, she found the bigger orcs -- Saruman’s strapping Urük Hai – damn sexy. Indeed, she sometimes fantasized about a Fanny sandwich between two dark slices of Urük Hai. And don't hold the mayo and pickles! Sure, they needed a good hard-bristled toothbrushing. But way sexier than Gimli the dwarf, whom Louise favored.)
When she broached the subject the next morning, simpering "Mammy loves baby's big Mister Wiggly," Hubert’s face had gone as red and expressionless as uncooked meatloaf. Droplets of sweat burst out on his brow and he had rushed off, thumbing his Blackberry furiously and muttering about "volatility in the sow bean and soy bellies markets." But Fanny stocked the medicine cabinet with all five flavors of Nyquil, as well as Robitussin, Sudafed and Dristan Nasal Spray. She counted the days until flu season, and, since allergies might provide a medicating opportunity, began to track pollen levels as well.
Once word got around the country club, pharmacy shelves throughout the Hamptons were stripped bare of cough suppressants, anti-histamines and decongestants. Even items on nearby shelves -- E-Z Boil Remover, Corn pads, Preparation H, Beano -- had sold in the frenzy.
"A rooster is a very randy male bird ... He cannot, however, mate
with the same hen more than five times in one day
... this is known as the 'rooster effect.'"
Ibid
But now the waffles had to be made and then the dog taken to the vet to be wormed. (Rufus was a turd eater. She sighed -- Men! -- sometimes it was all just too damn much.) So after a desultory "Umm mmm, that feels so big, so hard, so good, Mr. Buffet," she sidestepped to pour the batter on the griddle. Caught unawares -- fixed grin, eyes clenched shut, yelping like a angry Chihuahua -- Hubert continued to thrust urgently into empty space for a few more seconds. (It reminded Fanny of a recent BBC nature special in which the male preying mantis maintained his ardent coital pumping -- even after his head was eaten by the female. On a 12-foot 3-D plasma screen, it really made a visceral impact.) Then, opening his eyes in surprise, Hubert quickly straightened his suit jacket and sat down to read about the latest SEC witch hunt.
"I tell you, Fanny, socialist over-regulation is killing this country."
When the company limousine pulled up outside, a devoted wife handed her husband his briefcase and kissed him softly on the cheek. Then Fanny looked up with concern:
"You sound a little stuffed up this morning, dear. Are you coming down with something?" she asked hopefully.
Henry E. Panky
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