THE HUSBAND
When you’ve been married six years and counting, there are some things you learn. Like the appropriate time to pretend you’re asleep.
She thinks I don’t know that she is avoiding our bed, she tries to be polite about it; pretending to have other things to attend to in other parts of the house just to avoid my touch.
What she doesn’t know is that whenever she enters our bedroom, tiptoeing across the carpeted ground; I’m not usually asleep. I only pretend to be, so she can have the peace of mind she so desires.
She doesn’t want me touching her but she’s too sophisticated to play the kind of games other women play;
I’m too tired.
I’m on my period.
I’m this, I’m that.
She does hers in a way she can easily get away with. And I let her think she does.
A part of me admires her for sharing my bed these past years. For bearing my kisses, for letting me inside her. I remember our wedding night; dark and devoid of passion. In the years when we were still friends, I had often pictured her arched on her back beneath me, her head thrown back and lips parted in ecstasy. I often fantasized about those lips of hers, full and taunting, crushed under mine. It wasn’t hard getting a mental photo of her in her unguarded moments, those times when she asked me over just to vent.
She’d be clad in modest shorts that showed off a generous amount of thighs; thighs I’d often envisioned would fit my head so perfectly.
I’m not sure what she thought as she hung around me dressed that way, that I wouldn’t look? That I was so fond of her that I wouldn’t get a hard-on?
Sad as it may sound those moments were some of my most cherished, times when we could actually talk and be comfortable around each other even though I was pining for her.
I would give anything to go back in time. To have her beckon to me just to hold her. To have her let down her guard and let me in again.
To have her not look at me with such faintly disguised hate.
I would give anything to have Ema my friend back. Was friendship worth giving up for this? I had always wanted her and I didn’t hide it from her in our four years of friendship.
Every time I proclaimed my love for her, she would dash my hopes. She would tell me in that condescending voice ;
I love you very much John. But as a friend.
It was those four words that killed me.
But as a friend.
Why spoil everything by adding that?
I promised myself I would leave her. I would stop asking. I would move on and love someone else that didn’t hurt this much.
Boy did I try!
I met Lara, Susan and Deborah. Girls that I dated for a little over one month each.
And then I stopped when I noticed they all had something in common: Ema.
It dawned on me that no matter where I went, no matter how far I ran, Ema was my curse.
Two weeks after she turned thirty-seven, she came to my house; drunk.
I was surprised. Ema never drank, she was the calm, composed woman. The steady ship in the midst of the billowing storm.
Does your proposal still stand Johnny boy? She slurred, swaying on her feet.
By that time I had asked her to marry me ten times, at least.
What proposal? My heart was racing and even though I tried to calm it, to tell it to stop being silly; it didn’t.
Yes I will marry you, Johnny.
I knew I should have sent her away or at least put her to sleep because she was obviously drunk but I didn’t. My heart pounded against my chest and it didn’t matter that she was saying yes to me in such a state, what mattered was that she said it.
Yes, yes, yes. Let’s get married! She sang again before throwing up on my living room floor.
I didn’t sleep that night. I sat and watched over her, wishing the night never to end.
I thought by the time she woke up the next day, she would have changed her mind. I dreaded that she wouldn’t remember what she had said.
When she opened her eyes the next day, the first thing she said was:
You will still marry me, right?
I hugged her then, like my life depended on it. I was a forty year old man who was like a child that’d just been told that Santa Claus was real.
I knew that if I married her, if she was eventually mine, I would never give her up. Nothing in this world would make me walk away from her. I was confident that I could get her to love me. And not just as a friend.
Six years and a few sad orgasms later, I am losing my confidence. This woman is no longer the one I fell in love with. She is now a gloomy, reserved workaholic. The only thing I know puts a smile on her face is our baby. Steph.
I watched her with our daughter one day and saw her smile the way she used to before, before she married me. And I wished I was Steph.
Sometimes I wonder if talking would help our situation but I know this runs deeper than just communication. She is unhappy. She hates me. She plays dutiful wife when need be, around friends and family. But that’s it.
Her scorn is baring it’s teeth in more ways than one these days and perhaps that’s why I seek comfort in Philomena.
Philomena who is the same height as my wife and is also light-skinned like Ema, let’s me call her darling. Philomena who agrees to wear the perfume that’s Ema’s favorite just to excite me. Philomena who doesn’t get mad or ask questions when I call out Ema’s name as we embark on our journey of pleasure. Philomena who I pretend is Ema as we make love; is the reason why I don’t bother with the games my wife is playing these days.
I won’t leave her. I can’t leave Ema. I know that’s what she wants but I’m in too deep to let her go.
Ema is my curse, my cross I will bear.
END
Mimi. A 2014 (C)