Tell Me

Sits down.

Marie is my first, and sometimes I think only, adult female friend. Those other women – the ones from the school, the neighbourhood, the ones from Alex’s work – I socialise with. Sometimes just endure. Alex says I don’t like women very much, and perhaps he’s right. Still. Motherhood has thrust me fully into a community of women. Playgroups, playdates, playschools. Mom’s nights out. Gymnastics classes, book clubs. Goddamned pioneer Christmas field trips.

They would all be, I think, barely tolerable without Marie. And I have come to love Marie in all her facets, even her most annoying ones. One of these facets, so very, I think, feminine, and the one I enjoy the least, is that she confides in me. Constantly. She tells me of the rough patches in her marriage, the on-again-off-again online flirtation with her old flames, her secret hope – or fear – that one day this flirtation, or another, might become something else, something bigger, her immense guilt over those feelings when her marriage survives its rough patches and moves into harmony.

Because she confides – constantly, constantly, constantly – I know more about the intimacies of her marriage than I really want to. I know that when JP ‘wants to get laid’ (that’s how Marie always puts it), he turns on the charm and has even been known to unload the dishwasher. I know that, in contrast to his rather unpleasant living-room demeanour, in the bedroom he is a considerate and gentle lover – ‘the king of foreplay’. I know that he prefers to be on top – or sideways – and thinks doggie-style’s undignified. I know he gets a great deal of satisfaction from taking Marie from orgasm to orgasm. I know he doesn’t really like to give oral, his overall love of foreplay notwithstanding. In fact, he fakes it – ‘with wet fingers and slurping noises,’ Marie reports. How he thinks any woman can’t tell the difference between a finger and a tongue, I don’t know. Marie, apparently, has never called him on it. He spends a great deal of time on her boobs, and wanted her to get a boob-tightening job after she weaned their youngest to ‘get them back the way they’re supposed to be’.

I also know he prefers straight missionary vaginal sex to the best blowjob, and long stretches of abstinence followed by mara-fuck-athons to seize-the-moment quickies.

I also know, although Marie’s never put it like this, that the major problem with JP and Marie’s marriage is that JP is a wanker and treats her like shit on a daily basis.

And I also know that Marie thinks they don’t fuck enough. Whether JP’s satisfied with the situation as it is, I don’t know – I go out of my way to not talk to him, or to be in the same physical space with him. But Marie…oh, Marie wants to fuck more.

She tells me this all the time.

I suppose that’s the other reason – surely, the first must be that JP is a wanker and treats her like shit – behind her obsession with and pursuit of faux affairs.

About which she tells me all as well.

I accept Marie’s confidences as a sign of our friendship; sometimes I even enjoy them, because she tells a good story. She does not look to me for advice or any kind of commentary. She just wants someone to listen to her.

I can do that.

And I can tell, right now, that she needs to tell me something.

‘Tell me,’ I say. ‘What is it?’

‘I’m not going Christmas shopping,’ she says, after casting her eyes right and left to make sure the children are out of earshot. ‘I’m going for lunch, and I don’t know, maybe more, with, you know. Zoltan.’

Zoltan. Probably not his real name, but who’s being particular? Marie’s latest attempt at an affair. This one’s a stranger, someone she met online for the explicit purpose of having a hook-up. These days, I think of each of her flirtations as her latest attempt to sabotage the marriage she wants to end. But maybe not. Next week, maybe staying married, whatever the cost, may be the most important thing.

I arrange my face to look – supportive. I listen as Marie lambasts JP. Segues into lambasting the self-righteousness of ‘those women’ – Nicola, Colleen, the Greek chorus. ‘Do they not have feelings? Hormones? Desires? Are they all in denial? They’re all our age! Where the fuck are their hormones?’

She looks at me expectantly. Expecting what? Acquiescence, confirmation, confession?

Hard.

—Some things never change.

Like your effect on me.

I could. I could tell her. But I am a bad friend. I do not betray her confidences, never. But I never reciprocate either.

It’s not a conscious choice, exactly. It’s just…not me. I don’t tell. Plus, what do I have to reciprocate with? Sure, Alex annoys me from time to time. He has no sense of time, and will text me at 8.15 p.m. to tell me he should be home before 7 p.m. His relationship with his mother is co-dependent, and his relationship with his father and stepmothers is fucked up. I’ve given up trying to get him to put his shoes on the boot mat, and his idea of helping clean the house is to suggest the cleaners come in more often. But. He’s a great dad. And he’s been known to load the dishwasher. Well, supervise the kids as they load the dishwasher. More importantly: he gets hard the second he sees me naked. Now. And always. When I had a belly swollen with six-months’-worth of baby in it. When it was flabby and stretchy six months after the fourth baby.

Yeah, he gets cranky. Annoying. Distant. So do I. But at our worst, I do not wish to leave our marriage – nor do I secretly hope, as Marie sometimes does, that he leaves, so that I would be…what? Free but blameless. I’m…what am I? Perhaps less deluded? Alex and I, we are what we are, and it’s usually good, and it has downs, but it’s all about the long play. It’s about forever: not fairy-tale forever, just…nuclear-family forever.

A child of parents who will celebrate their forty-third wedding anniversary next year, I buy into that.

Marie calls us a fairy-tale marriage every once in a while, and pauses, and waits for me to say something. And I shrug. Five pregnancies, fourth births. Eleven, almost twelve years of solid monogamy. Of days too full of children and quotidian obligations to have much space for even audacious thought crime, much less real crime.

This thought intrudes: the last time I saw Matt, I had just found out I was pregnant with Cassandra.

And I did what I had to do, what had to be done.

This thought comes, too: a little more time and space for thought crime these days. My work ensures I get taken out to lunch and dinner by powerful and occasionally attractive men. Occasionally, after, I commit thought crime with them while fucking Alex.

But.

Why would I tell Marie that? To what end?

And – my fingers find the phone in my purse – she does not know anything about this part of me. This past part of me.

—See you…on the 14th.

I very much look forward to it.

‘What if he thinks I’m a skank?’ Marie asks me. ‘He knows I’m married. With children. And there I am…Do you think I’m a skank?’ She turns to me suddenly, sharply. I take a step back, creating space between us again.

‘Jesus, Marie, what do you think I am?’ I ask. ‘Your friend. Who’s looking after your kids so you can do whatever you need to do this afternoon. You don’t need to justify anything to me.’

‘I’d just feel better if you and Alex didn’t have this fairy-tale marriage,’ Marie says. There she goes again. ‘The prince and the princess. And I know JP’s more than ten years older than Alex. But Alex still looks so good, and young, and in shape – and the two of you together. You’re so…perfect.’

I love her and I do not want her to feel judged.

I could tell her.

‘I don’t want you to judge me,’ Marie says. ‘And I know you never say anything. But how can you not judge me when you’re so fucking happily married and faithful and…’

I could do this. I could. I could open the Facebook app on my phone, and go into messages. Hand the phone to Marie.

She would read. She would say, ‘Oh, my God,’ and I would I hear a thunk – me, falling off the pedestal.

‘Never think I’m judging you,’ I would say as she read.

‘Who is this?’ she would ask.

And this is where it ends. Where I know I won’t tell. I can’t tell. Because…because I don’t. Mine. Only mine to know and bear and carry.

So. I don’t show, I don’t share. Instead:

‘I never judge you,’ I say. ‘He won’t think you’re a skank. OK, well, he might. But he wants you to be a skank. Right? That’s what this whole thing is about.’

It’s almost the right thing to say. Marie smiles.

‘’K,’ she says. ‘’K. It will be OK. I’ll be fine. I look good, right?’ I nod. ‘See you in three or so hours.’

‘Be safe.’ I send her on her way. To her lunch. Or a parking-lot fuck.

I hope she’s packed a condom.

I spend a joyous but exhausting day with the kids. I don’t text. I don’t think about Matt. Really. I think about work – the bizarre financial case study I promised to review for a client for tomorrow morning, which clearly I’m not doing as I sled with the kids. Oh, fuck. What time will Alex be home? As Marie comes back – hair and makeup intact and overall mood light and neither angst-ridden nor post-coitally joyous, making me infer she only lunched and transgressed not much (we can’t talk with the kids around) – he texts to say he won’t be back until 8, maybe later – ‘fucking clients,’ he writes, the excuse for everything, always – and that won’t get him home in time to do bedtime…and, since I’ve been up since 5 a.m., I’ll be useless post-bedtime.

Marie’s kids and mine are starting to fight, tired of each other, so despite her half-hearted offer, I decline to send my brood home with her. Maybe I can sell them to my mom in the evening so I can work? I only need an hour, maybe two…

And that is why, a few hours later, I’m sitting in my parents’ kitchen eating liver and onions (ugh, how can they not know I hate liver and onions after all these years?), listening to four children vie for their grandparents’ attention…while the grandparents fight.

I have an odd sense of dissonance: I’m there but not there, and I hear my parents in freaky stereo. ‘They would have been better,’ my mother says of the mashed potatoes, ‘but your father insisted on using the new potato masher.’ ‘Insisted?’ my father asks. Voice low. But tired, tense. ‘I took what was in the drawer. I didn’t realise we had a right potato masher and a wrong potato masher.’ Stupid, stupid exchange. And not the first one I’ve heard like this – they are like this all the time now. Sometimes it’s funny. Often it’s sad. And always, after we leave, Alex and I promise ourselves that if we ever get like this, I’ll shoot him and then turn the gun on myself.

‘Put the pie in the oven to warm it up, Jerry,’ my mother says. Commands. ‘Gran bought you guys pie!’ she squeals at the kids, and they squeal back. ‘Where’s the pie?’ my father asks. ‘Where it always is!’ my mother screams and rolls her eyes. No, really. She screams. I stare at her in shock. Appalled. My father doesn’t even blink an eye. ‘Which is?’ he says with an excessive show of patience. My stomach turns and I suddenly very badly need to leave the room.

‘I’m going to go work,’ I say. ‘I don’t want any pie anyway. Be good for Gran and Gramps,’ I tell the progeny, handing out kisses. I look at Gran and Gramps. ‘Be good in front of the kids,’ I say. It could be taken as a joke. Or a warning. But it’s taken as neither; it’s not heard. The pie’s coming.

I exit stage right, camp out in one of the spare bedrooms, pull out the laptop.

Start typing. I turn on Facebook as I work. Cause that’s how the professionals do it, right? Having your Twitter feed and Facebook and LinkedIn on in the background increases your work efficiency. Well-proven fact. Not.

Confession: I use social media almost exclusively as a procrastination tool.

Still.

I have no ulterior motive.

I am not hoping to see a message from Matt.

No, really. And so I am not the least bit disappointed that there isn’t one.

I work. God, who crunched these numbers? Either an idiot or a liar. I identify all the red flags. I get into it. There is a sick kind of satisfaction to it; bringing order to chaos. I work. I am…tranquil.

Ping.

Answer the question.

—Working.

Waiting. I want you to dress for the occasion. The occasion being our reunion, after what, 10 years?

Almost eleven. But who’s counting? And how many years since we met? I think…twenty. Oh, my fucking God, twenty. When did that happen? The first time we met, I was…I think I was eighteen. Jesus-fucking-Christ. Grunge ruled. I wore distinctly unsexy jean overalls. I type.

—Overalls have a certain nostalgic value.

Oh, yes. Nostalgic.

And harder.

—Demure.

Sceptical.

Get nostalgic with me, lover. I remember the lingerie store changing room in Bankers Hall.

—Do you?

And you reading me erotica over the phone when I was up North. With John’s permission.

Two memories from hundreds.

—I remember stairwells. Too many stairwells.

—The recording booth at the studio.

—The roof of your apartment building…

The dark room.

Halloween party. The lawn. Do you remember?

—Oh yes. That might be my favourite…

Scandalised populace.

—We had no shame.

What’s your adjective right now?

—Disturbed.

Guess mine.

—You’ve been using one consistently.

The correct answer is lustful. Also acceptable: dirty (the good kind).

I pause. Shudder. I feel…yes, I feel. And I type:

—Lusciously pleased.

—god i miss you

—I really didn’t think I did.

And I you. Tell me what you want. Be blunt.

—your tongue in my ear, on my neck

—other places

Curse these tight jeans.

I miss your mind. And your mouth.

And the serious tone of voice you take when you talk dirty.

—oh god

—terrified

Eager.

Demanding.

—Are you.

Dominant.

—Oh really?

Determined.

—On top.

Challenged.

—tumbling

Pleased.

Hungrier and harder than ever.

—ecstatic

Sublimely motivated.

Aggressive.

—sublime

—lovely word

—luscious

—languorous

Throbbing

Pounding.

God. I want to fuck your mind.

Savage your vocabulary.

—Savage?

—I would prefer to be ravaged.

Or ruled? With a firm hand.

—Oh god.

Tell me you’re going to make yourself come. Tonight.

—I think I just did.

With a full report upon completion.

—Well that you might need to wait for.

No time like the present.

—making you wait and anticipate has always been my MO

Making you submit has always been mine. (Or attempt therein)

—almost disarmed

pleased

—// almost //

Determined. Now what are you going to wear for me?

—I do have these fuck-me heels that will be perfect.

—So long as I don’t have to walk anywhere in them.

Describe.

—just wait

—some things just have to be seen

Put them on.

—they’re hard to type in

—That’s how hot they are

Intrigued.

You won’t be on your feet for long.

—Nice. We’ll be arrested for indecent exposure.

Hopeful.

Fuck-me heels. Good start.

This has been…electrifying. Illuminating. Awoken thoughts I’m glad to be reminded of. I think I’m going to go…take care of myself right now.

—Enjoy.

Still at the office.

—very professional

—close the door first

Tell me where do you want this cum?

—running down to my belly button

Where do I aim?

—at black lace of the bra I’ll be wearing with the fuck-me shoes.

—go. See you in 12 days.

I count the hours.

xx

—oo

I finish the analysis in a stupor. And before hitting send, take it to my dad. Ask him to read it to make sure there are no odd adjectives or metaphors in the copy.

He doesn’t ask why. Points to ‘orgasmic’, ‘sublime’ and a completely extraneous ‘pounding’. I delete them. Send the file to the client. Take the kids home, put them to bed.

When Alex finally gets home, close to midnight, I’m still awake and give him the most adventurous night in bed he’s had in months. Possibly years.

‘Jesus,’ he says when it’s over. ‘What happened to you?’

‘Hormones,’ I say. ‘I think…yes, hormones.’

And we sleep.

Day 2 Did she just?

Tuesday, December 4

Alex brings me coffee up to bed before he leaves for the firm. I stumble out of bed and into the shower. The brood’s already up, the boys fighting over who gets to play Minecraft first, the girls curled up on the couch with books, one reading, the other carefully, seriously imitating her sister. I look at them intensely. Feel my love for them reverberate in waves, through me, throughout the room.

No one wants to do much of anything in the short hour or two of the morning before I have to bundle the kids into the car to drop them off at school. They just chill. I consider it an ultimate test of character not to check Facebook.

It causes me physical pain.

I drop the elder three at school and Annie at my mom’s for the morning, and then head off to the gym. If I was a woman nearing 40 somewhere sexy like New York City, say, I’d probably have a therapist. But I’m a skiing Calgarian so I have a personal trainer. Also a chiropractor and an acupuncturist. And a massage therapist. Winter sports kill the spine…and our tendency to drive SUVs and mega-trucks any distances over 0.6 kilometres when we’re not on the hills means we need fucking treadmills to get exercise.

There really is no hope for humanity, I think as I careen down one overpass, then another. It’s my usual think as I drive to the gym. That if I just went for a (free) bike ride, (free) run or did some real physical work – chopped wood, I don’t know, laid some bricks or something – I’d achieve the same result in a less self-centred, narcissistic environment.

I keep on getting distracted from my self-inflicted lecture by imagining Matt’s tongue between my thighs.

Fuck. Focus.

I park. Wave to Jesse as I run to the changing room. Jesse. My trainer. The very very very junior fourth partner, as he puts it, in a very clean, very bright, very Zen gym, filled with inspirational quotes and a dizzying array of equipment. The gym runs classes, sells memberships and all that other stuff, but its real draw is the personal training services – or just going to the gym to ogle the trainers. The personal trainers, male and female, look like Greek – in one case, Nubian – gods.

Mine is, not to put too much of a point on it, the prettiest. He was a gift from Alex for my birthday a couple of years ago.

‘So I saw Nicola yesterday,’ he says as he loads up weights for me. I stare at him blankly. What the fuck is he talking about. Nicola? Nicola! Who is Nicola?

Not important. What’s important is how you will look in those fuck-me heels when we meet.

—Go away. Not in my head. Not now.

I know Nicola. Jesse knows Nicola. I introduced Nicola to Jesse, actually. Before the gong-show of a divorce, when her own struggle with careening towards 40 resulted in a fitness-must-lose-weight-and-look-hotter craze. I don’t judge: I don’t come to Jesse because it’s fun or because I enjoy exercise. I too have no desire to be a fat, frumpy middle-aged woman who wears yoga pants because they’re more forgiving than jeans. Regardless. Jesus, what is happening in my head? Narcissistic bitch, snap out of it. He’s talking about Nicola. I need to listen. ‘She told me about, you know, her situation. She said you knew,’ Jesse says. He blushes slightly.

I nod. I’m fond of Jesse. He’s beautiful and has a nice voice, and is ridiculously young. Chronologically, he’s 26, and half the time – when he’s doing his job and telling me what to do – he’s older than his birth age, confident, in control, in charge. And the other half – when he moves on to any other ground – he’s so very, very young. And awkward. And so unaware of life.

Sometimes, I think he might be gay – the question’s never been asked and answered, because, when I’m with him, he makes me lift heavy shit and I scream and grunt and pant and so there is not much room for conversation. I infer his potential homosexuality purely from the fact that although he is built like an Adonis and eminently fuckable – when Alex introduced me to him, I cooed that other men buy their wives flowers and chocolate and my beloved got me a ripped boy toy – he comes across as very, very…safe. He gropes and prods and readjusts me – and his dozens-upon-dozens of other female clients – fairly thoroughly. It never feels inappropriate, or edgy. I sweat with him two or three times a week, and I’ve committed no thought crime with him, no matter how ardent my mood is otherwise. He’s that safe. So safe, I’ve pondered setting him up with my neighbour’s seventeen-year-old daughter…except for that he-might-be-gay thing. We’ve all got to go through our gay lovers – I’ve had two – but it really sucks if the gay boy’s your first one. A little disheartening.

‘I’m just so shocked,’ Jesse says. I nod and grunt. Lift up. Hold. Drop down. ‘Have you met her husband?’

‘Y…e…s,’ I exhale. ‘Total dork. Even before he became a cheating rat-fuck bastard.’

‘Well, I wasn’t going to be so…’ Jesse pauses.

‘Offensive?’ I offer as I gasp.

‘Blunt,’ Jesse says. ‘But yes. Not exactly a Don Juan. I wouldn’t have thought…have you seen the pictures of the girlfriend?’

‘The naked pictures?’ I get out between lifts. ‘No. I managed to avoid that. I guess you didn’t.’

‘Nicola showed me,’ Jesse says.

‘Skanky?’ I ask. Jesse is shocked. His Puritanism and youth come out at the most unexpected times. He’s shocked – that I said skank. He’s shocked that Nicola and her dorky husband are divorcing because of his torrid affair with a skanky but sufficiently attractive, to Nicola’s ex at least (‘If you like that type’ – that’s Nicola’s voice providing commentary in the background), intern. He’s shocked the dorky husband was fucking the attractive skank. He might be shocked people in their 30s and 40s, and those really old 50-year-olds sweating on the ellipticals over there, have sex. Dirty thoughts.

I’m not quite 40 yet. But it’s less than two years away. And Matt…is Matt 40 now? He’s got to be. Maybe even 41.

‘Hey, Jesse,’ I ask. ‘How old do you think I am?’

He pauses. Yes, it’s a test. I asked him how old he was a few months ago. I thought 28 – he was 26. My two-year misjudgement didn’t matter. But he really can’t win with me, I realise. If he says 40, I’ll throw the barbell at him. If he says 36, who gives a crap? What’s two years less? I catch the thought and stare it in the face. It’s never ever bothered me that I’m now 38. Four kids. Soft, loose breasts, stretched skin on the belly. That’s all part of me, of what I am. Am I anxious about my age? Am I having a mid-life crisis? A stupid fucking mid-life crisis that’s making me easy fodder for a manipulative fuck like Matt who clearly is having a mid-life crisis of his own, much like Nicola’s husband was having when he started fucking the skank? Except, instead of looking for something new, he comes looking for me, because he knows…