“Ah Vanitas Vanitatum! …
Which of us has his desire? Or, having it, is satisfied?
Come children, let us shut up the box and the puppets,
for our play is played out.”
William Thackeray, Vanity Fair
“Jeannine, I’m not going to service you tonight.” I made and held eye contact with the bathroom mirror, like a straight-talking TV doctor delivering the bad news to an old family friend. Hmm … I was aiming for gentle but firm, but it sounded a bit severe, and J might react in a defensive, even retributive manner. Maybe a compassionate twinkle of the eyes would ameliorate the harshness. I re-directed my gaze to the mirror: “Jeannine, I’m not going to service you tonight,” twinkle, twinkle. No, it wasn’t coming through, it only made my expansive forehead as wrinkled as the bald guy’s on the “so don’t tell me all insurance companies are the same” commercial. Man, that’s a lot of wrinkles. Spooky. Memo to self: skip the compassionate twinkle when chatting up the teenage girls at the 7-11.
But what about Jeannine? She was already waiting in bed, and the aggravated way in which she had stabbed and chewed her flank steak at dinner made me suspect she would require a thorough servicing tonight—probably thirty, forty minutes worth of vigorous licky-licky poky-poky humpy-pumpy. Maybe more if she took her "diet pills" this morning -- when combined with Wellbutrin and alcohol, that often jacked her libido up to speed-freak proportions. Which is fine and dandy when I'm in the mood.
But I’m too tired! I don't feel like it!
Don’t snivel, Henry: that brings outs Jeannine’s mean streak faster than calling her “Big Bottom” in front of the other lawyers at Sweeney, Sweeney & Weezell company events.
Well, then … what about the sex toy option? I’d still have to dedicate the time and elbow grease, but my mind would be free to think about election dynamics, my toy trains or adjusting the idle on the weed whacker. I’d also be let off the hook of having to simulate a rabid lust I didn’t honestly feel—except for intermittent ejaculations of encouragement such as “Oh yeah, mama! Come on now! Uh huh, that's right! Take me to the moon on the hummingbird wings of your sweet, wet love!”
The thing is—and don’t tell J this—but, push comes to shove, sex toys depress me in a profoundly existential way that makes me want to curl up and die. I don’t fault the theory behind the erogenous sensatory-enhancement utensil, and I certainly don’t support background checks, 3-day waiting periods, parental permission, or any other Big Brotherish limitations on their legitimate purchase and use. (Though I do support trigger locks to protect the little ones.) Sex toys are nothing more or less than tools, and even I have enjoyed their presumptive deployment in certain private fantasies involving chipper, blonde newswomen and the things they do at the news desk when they think everyone else has gone home. (Though, in reality, they know I'm lurking reverently in the shadows behind the camera.) That said, however, the tangible reality, the actual disproportionate physicality, of one or more, two-pound implements of hard plastic and fleshy, ribbed, ductile and rubber, buzzing-like-an-electric-nose-hair-trimmer, in the frangible space-time continuum of sexual dilly dally, inevitably leads to the dispiritingly impossible-to-answer question of “Why am I here anyway?”
I took a deep, ragged breath, and decided to try the "we’re-both-adults-in-a-relationship-of-loving-candor-and-mutual-respect" approach:
“Baby, sweet pants? You know you drive me wildly insane with desire, but if it’s all right with you, I’m not really feeling up to servicing you tonight. Not the way you deserve … the way you so richly deserve. The way I’d like to. Like a love machine.” Here I pumped my loins a few times, piston-like, clenched fists rocking back and forth, eyeballs rolling back into my head. “Get uppa, get on up! … Except I don’t feel like it tonight. I wanted to be upfront about it, because I respect you and your womanly appetites too much to pretend otherwise.”
Nope, I’m sending mixed messages, never a good strategy when J had a bellyful of red meat and liquor. She tended to hear what she wanted to hear anyway, and frankly didn’t care if I pretended—as long as I got the job done. (Eyes clenched shut, she usually called me "Dr. McDreamy," "Denzel" or "Gimli the Dwarf" during the operation itself. Indeed, there was always a look of surprise and disappointment -- "You!" -- when she opened her eyes.) What I really needed was an inarguable excuse or an act of God.
“Oh boy, Jeannine, oofah! Is my prostate acting up tonight or what! Feels like someone put a coffee can up my ass -- and not in a good way. I couldn’t service you even if I wanted to! And I do, because you look hot! Yum, yum! But I can’t. Because of my prostate -- and I’ve got shingles too.” Here I could grab my grizzled buttocks with both hands and grimace with pain. For about twenty minutes, I practiced grimacing in the mirror, while gripping and squeezing my rear end in regretful anguish. Really put my heart into it. Then I remembered a deranged gentleman in Kurt Vonnegut's Cat’s Cradle, who, when seized by a particularly powerful spiritual epiphany would grab his own bottom with both hands, and exclaim, “Yes, yes! Yes, yes!” So I tried that for a while. Pretty damn funny … but I wasn’t sure if Jeannine would get the subtle literary allusion.
However, I could use it at my next performance review -- "Henry, are you going to make your numbers this quarter?" -- the boss man does like to see heartfelt enthusiasm in his underlings.
Then I wondered how it would look if I did my eye-twinkling, forehead-wrinkling thing at the same time.
The hours flew by.
***********************
By the time I finally tip-toed out of the "tiny room," J was snoring in a grunt-like fashion on the inhale and nose-whistling on the exhale, and her mouth was making small, wet, flapping noises as if she was eating something gooey, such as oatmeal. Additionally, she had a cheap plastic shower cap over her curlers, and her spirulina clay mask had dried and cracked on her face like an algae pond struck with drought.
Suddenly the world rocked and tilted; the thin, Motel-6 wallboard between us and alternate dimensions cracked wide open, and I glimpsed...Xanadu!
Desire began to percolate like a hot, bubbling mud pot in the heretofore dormant landscape of my lust. I swooned, shuddered and moaned with enthralled carnality. My pendent organs stirred like fiery Balrog in the dark places of Khazad Dum: boom-boom, boom-boom! And I ached to woo, to worship, this voluptuous Aphrodite, who, by some unimaginable sorcery, now lounged, sheet-tangled in slatternly abandon, upon my own fallow bed. Oh, I salivated for the heavy, pendulous muskmelons of Babylon, thirsted for the milk and honey of fertile Canaan. My breath rasped with tender ruttishness as I prodded one meaty and seductively undraped leg: “Jeannine, baby, are you asleep or just playing possum? Jeannine, my soft-bosomed Circe? It's me, Denzel Washington, big and black as you want me to be.
You wanna mess around? Huh dumpling? Jeannine!”
Taking her incoherent grumble for coy assent, I scooted closer to lash her flirty ear with my eager tongue. I reached out with moist, trembling digits to squeeze the stately pleasure domes of her warm, ripe, rosy and well-nourished hindquarters. "Thy name is Woman," I whispered hoarsely.
And raising rapt face to heaven, I cried, “Yes, yes! Yes, yes!”
By Henry E. Panky
A sad, capering granfalloon of one
|
