Couplehood Read online

  “Okay. The guy over there—eating by himself? Just broke up with his girlfriend.”

  “No, she left him.”

  “For her aerobics instructor.”

  “Good call.”

  “Okay, okay, okay—the lady over there, with the two kids? Those are not her children.”

  “She’s not even related.”

  “She takes different children out every weekend, because she loves children but is sadly unable to have any of her own.”

  “Because of a radiation leak in the town where her husband used to work.”

  “Which killed him, by the way.”

  “Yeah, because otherwise, how come he’s not here?”

  “Exactly.”

  Watching other couples is even more fun. You can make up stories and be really judgmental at the same time.

  “Oh, they’re not happy at all.”

  “No, they’re not.… Look how he doesn’t look at her when she’s talking.”

  “Just keeps eating his soup.… She’s talking, he’s eating.…”

  “You know, they haven’t made love in over five months.”

  “Because he’s cheating on her.”

  “And she knows about it.”

  “Of course she knows.”

  “That’s what she’s talking about. She knows who the woman is, where they’ve been meeting.…”

  “And he can’t look up because shell see it in his eyes—”

  “And she’ll know she’s right.”

  “Of course she’s right.”

  “Bastard.”

  “Makes me sick.”

  Of course, sometimes it backfires and blows up in your face.

  “See that couple over there?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Look how he keeps squeezing her arm. And he really looks at her when she’s talking. I love that.”

  “I look at you when you’re talking.… I mean, not now, because we’re looking at them, but ordinarily.…”

  “Are they more affectionate than us?”

  “No.”

  “They look really affectionate.”

  “They’re not. They’re exactly the same amount affectionate as we are. In fact, if anything, less so.”

  Then we watch them a little more desperately, looking for flaws.

  “Do you like her hair?”

  “Why?”

  “Just tell me my hair doesn’t look like that.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “Really?”

  “You can’t even compare. You have beautiful hair, and hers is all dyed and yucky and stupid. She has stupid hair.”

  “She really does, doesn’t she?”

  “I’m telling you.”

  A moment. “Then how come he’s so affectionate?”

  Bing-

  Bang-

  Boom

  Sexually speaking, when two people first get together, it’s easy to be impressive. They’ve never seen the show before, so every trick is a crowd pleaser.

  “Watch this. You watching? Hey—look at that. Didn’t expect that, did you? Of course not. I’m very, very good.”

  But after a while, you run out of tricks. The bag is empty. The lights go up, and you have to tell the truth. “Ummm, that’s basically it. That’s all I know. Good night everybody.… Drive safely.”

  You can’t even think of what else could be done. You both just accept that this is pretty much what it’s going to be for the rest of your lives.

  Of course, the big fear would be that they’re not impressed. “That doesn’t feel good? Really. Hmm. In my last relationship, that was a big hit. For six years, that was a very popular move. But you’re saying it’s actually more of an irritant? Hmm. Interesting.… I’d like you to see the show again tomorrow. This was an off night.”

  You know what ruins sex for a lot of guys? The letters to Penthouse magazine. Have you ever read them? Me neither, but a friend of mine did and he told me …

  What they have are letters written by presumably normal people like ourselves, and we read them and go, “Where does this happen? I’ve never heard anything like this. I’ve picked up hitchhikers, they didn’t do any of that. They just got out of the car when we got there, and left.”

  And all these boasting figures: “I’ve never considered myself big, but at eleven inches …” Oh come on. My leg is eleven inches.

  They don’t realize I want these letters to be true. I’m rooting for them. And if it doesn’t sound exactly true, I’ll bend the truth. I’ll work around it, give them the benefit of the doubt.

  Because they start off normal enough: “I went down to get the mail, but to my surprise, the regular mailman had been replaced by a beautiful blond woman.…”

  Okay, that’s not crazy. Why not? A blond person delivers his mail—maybe he lives in Milwaukee, heavy Scandinavian population …

  “… It was a hot day, she came inside, I offered her a drink, she took off her shirt …”

  Okay, that’s not crazy. It’s hot, maybe she had that shirt-sticking-to-your-back-thing going on, so she had to take it off.… So far, he’s not lying.

  “… We had a few drinks, suddenly one thing led to another, and we were all over each other. I was here, she was there … we were touching, we were rubbing, we were biting … Suddenly, my neighbor, a bikini model who was recently widowed, comes in and she gets in the action, too …”

  Alright. Maybe the neighbor was concerned. She heard the furniture being tossed about, she was alarmed. She comes in, they’re naked, she’s dressed—she was embarrassed. No one likes to be overdressed. So she strips down and gets in there, too. So far, he’s writing an honest letter.

  “… We’re touching, we’re moving, and these three cheerleaders were coming home from practice …”

  Who’s to say he doesn’t live near a high school?

  “… Now the six of us are rolling around my Barca-Lounger …”

  And then he goes too far.

  “… And after nine hours, we took a shower and did it again.”

  You did not! You did nothing of the kind. Why can’t you just be honest? “After nine hours, I had a heart attack and almost died.” Then, I could have sympathy for the guy. “Well, sure you got hurt, look what you tried to do. That’s too much.”

  Just be honest. That’s all.

  The big problem with sex, I believe, is faulty advertising. It’s always sold as something “to be shared” by two people.

  Right there: the word “share.” That’s where the problem starts.

  Sex is not about sharing. It never was and it never will be.

  I don’t care how sensitive you think you are, if you’re making love, and you freeze-frame the action, at any given second, one of the two people is thinking: “I hope this feels good for you because I got a cramp you wouldn’t believe.… No kidding around, I have no feeling in my left hip.… That last little motion was entirely for your benefit.”

  You’re either giving or you’re taking.

  “That was for you, this is for me. This is for you, that’s for me.…” You take turns. You alternate. The trick is to alternate quickly and consistently enough, so the whole thing is a big blur and everyone goes home a winner.

  Even kissing is complicated.

  Kissing is a wonderful thing, but there’s an inherent design flaw: I don’t think anyone’s face is supposed to be that close to your face for that length of time.

  It’s just odd. If for no other reason, it’s frightening. Why do you think people close their eyes when they kiss? Think about it. In the real world, if you saw someone an inch and a half away, coming at you with their eyes open and their lips puckered, you’d scream. It’s alarming.

  Plus, it’s not particularly flattering. For either of you. So you close your eyes. It’s safe; no one has to know what you look like in that condition.

  We close our eyes unless the kiss goes on a really long time. If the kiss goes on too long, you will sneak open one eye and peek at the othe
r person.

  Everyone does this, and I’m not sure why. I guess we want to make sure it’s still going on. Because that would make you look dumb—the kiss is over and no one told you. You’re still going and she’s reading a magazine—you’re going to look very bad.

  Sometimes people open their eyes just to check on the other person. This happens in new relationships. There are too many unknowns. So if you’re kissing, and she momentarily takes her hand off your back, you get nervous. “Where’s her hand going? What is she—going to stab me?” You open that eye right up.

  Maybe she’s using the free hand to steal things. “I could’ve sworn I had an ashtray right there.… This lunatic is swiping ashtrays from right under my nose.”

  So you sneak a peek. Just to be sure. Which is only fair, because while you were still kissing, she was sneaking peeks at you.

  A very unfortunate moment is when you both sneak a peek at the same time. This is not good. Because now what you have is two human heads with their lips locked and their eyes wide open. There’s no romance, there’s no passion—there’s nothing. There’s just someone standing very close with their nose against your nose. The whole concept of kissing becomes suddenly grotesque and perverse.

  And you both get defensive.

  “What are you looking at?”

  “What are you looking at?”

  “I wasn’t looking.”

  “I saw you looking.”

  “Yeah, well, you wouldn’t have noticed me looking if you weren’t looking in the first place.”

  “Look, this is obviously not working. Why don’t we just call it a night, huh? Just put the ashtray back and we’ll forget the whole thing ever happened.”

  Sometimes, even with a partner you know by heart, you can be jolted with new information.

  One night, after what I thought was a particularly impressive display of sexual know-how, I turned to my bride, very proud of myself, and with a knowing smile said, “Not too shabby, huh?”

  I actually said that.

  (I share this with you, and no one else.)

  She smiles back, but not enough. I know something’s wrong.

  “What?”

  She says, gently, “I didn’t really have the moment I think you think I had.”

  I’m confused. “What are you talking about? Sure you did.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes you did.”

  “Okay, when? When did I have that moment?”

  “Before. When you made that sound. Don’t you remember? Right before I made that sound that I made.”

  “I remember that.”

  “Yeah well, I never would have made that sound if you hadn’t made your little throaty noise first. I took my cue from you”

  She says, “I didn’t give any cue.”

  “Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but when you make that sound …”—and I demonstrated; people really hate when you do that—“when you make that sound, is that not like a signal for ‘Hello, we have a winner’?”

  She pauses. “Sometimes.”

  My brain races. “What do you mean ‘sometimes’?”

  “I mean sometimes it means that and sometimes it means I’m just very close.”

  Now, understand: This is not someone I just met. This is a woman I’ve known for many years. And this is something I honestly never heard.

  “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “No.”

  “There’s no way you could expect me to know that.”

  She says, “Well, now you know.”

  “Yeah, but it’s a little late now. You can’t make the same sound to mean two different things.”

  “I can’t?”

  I was adamant. “No, you can’t. You have to have two distinct sounds. One for ‘Thank you, no more calls’ and another one for ‘We still need a few more calls to hit our goal.’ ”

  She looks at me, sees that sadly I’m not joking. “Fine. I will try to distinguish my sounds.”

  “Please. That’s all I’m asking. Let’s lock this down. Because, hey, this is for your benefit—not mine.”

  See, I don’t think women understand this. The whole concept of the sensitive, giving, patient lover is not something that comes to men instinctively.

  Obviously. We’re the ones who made up the Bing-Bang-Boom approach. And not because we’re bad people—it is simply that that’s how we would make love if we were by ourselves.

  And I’ll tell you something else: Even within the Bing-Bang-Boom, we only made up the “Bing” and the “Bang” to get the “Boom.” “Boom” was the objective the whole time.

  But we came up with the “Bing” and the “Bang.” Why? Because we care. We’re out there, making an effort.

  I’m simply saying, we’re potentially even worse than you think, so please, give us a little credit here.

  Pain,

  Humiliation,

  and

  the Great

  Outdoors

  One of the reasons people get married is suntan lotion; you’re going to need help. There are parts of your back that you simply can’t get to by yourself, and quite frankly, no one is going to do it for you who isn’t married to you.

  My fear of getting burned goes back to being a kid, when you not only had the pain but the humiliation bonus the next day when you had to wear a T-shirt in the water. Nothing more embarrassing than that one. Just a big advertisement to the community that you have no common sense whatsoever. “You all put on lotion and didn’t get burned; I myself was careless and stupid, and I now wear this Garment of Shame before the entire bathing population.”

  And you get the little air bubble under the T-shirt, which provided your friends something extra to pull, thereby adding another layer of pain on top of the humiliation. All in all, a pleasant outing.

  Nowadays, people flee the sun. With all the technological and medical discoveries, we’ve been reduced to cavemen again. “Ugh, Big Round Thing in Sky—BAD.”

  And there are so many choices in Suntanning maintenance. They’re numbered 1 to 125. Who knows that specifically how they want to be tanned? And unless you know your exact latitude, longitude, and the speed of the Earth’s orbit, you’re just winging it anyway. “Let me see, it’s very hot out, the winds are coming from the east, I’m originally from the Northwest … I’m going to go with Number 15. Yeah, 15 sounds good for me.”

  You just want to be better protected than the guy lying next to you. “What does he have—a 20? I’m going to get a 25.”

  It becomes a competition.

  “Oh yeah? I see your 25 and raise you a plastic nose guard and a PABA hat.”

  We once went to a nude beach, the logic being: It’s 140 degrees, why not scorch everything?

  The thing about being naked in public is—there’s nothing you can think about except how naked you are. And how naked everybody else is. That’s all you see.

  You don’t think, “There’s a tall guy.” It’s, “There’s a naked guy.” You don’t say, “That woman looks like a lovely person.” You say, “There’s a naked lady.”

  And you think about your clothes. When you’re dressed, you never think about your clothes. You never walk down the street conscious of your clothes, thinking, “I love my pants. I’m happy to have my pants.” But when you’re naked, you can’t get past, “I have no pants. I’m walking, and I’m very much without trousers.” That’s all you think about: the absence of places to put your hands.

  You know how when you’re in the water, you have very little body weight? This is another gift that nature provides to help keep men and women together. Men love it because with one hand you can lift the entire person you’re married to. And this works out for both of you, because in one shot, you feel strong and she feels thin. While she’s thinking, “I really am losing weight,” you’re busy thinking, “I am the Strongest Man in the World.”

  You have to appreciate these Little Things in life, because the Big Things may never get here, and then you’v
e hung around for nothing.

  My personal favorite is when you go swimming, and two hours later, hot water leaks out of your ear. For no reason. Out of nowhere, you just get this little, warm release in your ear, and all of a sudden, you’re hearing better. You didn’t even know you were hearing badly. It’s just a bonus from God. You’re thinking, “Gee, I’m not complaining, it’s good, everything’s good,” and then all of a sudden, “Even better.” You gotta love that.

  Being near water is supposed to be “calming”; apparently, you can “breathe” your problems out across the ocean.

  I keep trying this, but in the middle of breathing out, I always think, “Someone’s going to be breathing this in. These problems have to end up somewhere.” I envision some poor guy on the coast of Japan, trying to relax, and suddenly he’s got my problems. He doesn’t need that. He’s walking around going, “Gee, I got to send a note to Aunt Essie, thank her for the sweater—I don’t even know who she is.”

  And my next thought is, “Forget about that—what about his problems? I don’t want them washing back to me.” We could each potentially be walking around with problems neither of us are prepared to handle. Suddenly this whole “breathing and relaxing” thing is not as simple as it’s cracked up to be.

  It’s not easy to ever truly “get away from it all,” because like they say, “Wherever you go, there you are.” (Again, I couldn’t tell you who They are, but trust me—they said it.)

  I mean, I love going for walks in the mountains, but I always feel I kind of look wrong. Like people can tell I’m faking it. I’ve been hiking happily and had people stop me, presuming my car broke down.

  I’m not sure what the actual difference is between “hiking” and just “walking.” Is it speed? Intent? It may be related to the type of pants you’re wearing. Shorts that come close to the knees can turn “walking” into “hiking” like that.

  Also to be considered is What You Look At. If you’re just going from Point A to Point B, it’s “walking,” but if you stop and point at a tree, it’s “hiking.” Even a simple “Oh, look—a bird” automatically makes you a “hiker.” So, if that’s not what you had in mind, for God’s sake be careful what you point at.