“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, at least. Maybe more if she took her Wellbutrin this morning.
But I’m too tired! I don’t want to!
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.
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 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! That's right! Take me to the moon on the 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, three-day waiting periods, parental permission, or any other Big Brother limitations on their legitimate usage (though I do support trigger locks). Sex toys are nothing more or less than a tool, and even I have enjoyed their suppositive deployment in certain private fantasies involving chipper blonde newswomen. That said, however, the tangible reality, the actual disproportionate physicality, of one or more, two or three pound implements of fleshy, ribbed, ductile 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. 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! I couldn’t service you even if I wanted to! And I do, because you look hot! Yum, yum! But I can’t. Because the old prostate is acting up! And I’ve got piles and 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 bottom in regretful anguish. Really put my heart into it (I’m a double Leo). Then I remembered a deranged gentleman in Cat’s Cradle, who, when seized by a particularly powerful spiritual epiphany would grab his own ass with both hands, and exclaim, “Yes, yes! Yes, yes!” So I tried that for a while. It was pretty damn funny … but I wasn’t sure if Jeannine would get the subtle literary allusion.
However, I could use it for my next bookstore reading; the baying crowd appreciates a performance. 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 the bathroom, 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, in her dreams. Additionally, she had a cheap plastic shower cap over her curlers, and a spirulina mud mask had dried and cracked on her face like an algae pond struck with drought.
Suddenly the world tilted and -- unexpected, unlooked for and undoubtedly undeserved as it might be -- I glimpsed Xanadu! My coy lady!
I swooned, shuddered and moaned with enthralled carnality. My half-dead organs of physical affection suddenly 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 heathen Babylon, thirsted for the dulcet milk and honey of fertile Canaan. My breath rasped with tender ruttishness as I prodded one meaty and seductively undraped leg: “Jeannine, my Eskimo Pie of Love? Are you asleep or just playing possum? Jeannine, my sweet-bottomed Ring Ding? You want to mess around? Huh dumpling? Jeannine?”
Taking her incoherent grumble for eager assent, I scooted closer to lash her ear with my thick, scarred tongue. I reached out with moist, trembling digits to squeeze the stately pleasure domes of her ripe, rosy, warm and well-nourished hindquarters.
Raising my rapt face to heaven, “Yes, yes! Yes, yes!” I cried.
By Henry E. Panky
A sad, capering granfalloon of one
|
