Aunt Erma's Cope Book (2 page)

is there

a draft in your

open marriage?

mY SON, JAWS II, had a habit that drove me crazy. He'd walk to the refrigerator-freezer and fling both doors open and stand there until the hairs in his nose iced up. After surveying two hundred dollars' worth of food in varying shapes and forms he would declare loudly “There's nothing to eat.”

I used to react to that remark like a gauntlet thrown down or an attack on my honor. The remark no longer held a challenge for me. I sat at the table and continued to read my book.

“Are you reading another book on marriage?” he asked.

“What's the matter with that?”

“Nothing,” he said, then added, “there's something I always wondered. How come you and Dad never lived together before tying the knot?”

I said, “Are you crazy? We got married because we didn't know one another well enough to live together.”

The remark was ludicrous and we both knew it. The truth is, in a world of “limited arrangements,” “meaningful relationships,” and “marital concepts” his father and I were dinosaurs.

We had never negotiated the old contract, never dropped an option on one another, never comparison-shopped. We not only hadn't a clue as to where one another was coming from ... we didn't know where we were going until one of the kids brought home the car.

We must have seemed weird in a world where young people met in a line to see Superman, made a commitment to one another by the intermission, and dissolved the relationship between ordering a pizza and picking it up.

I closed the McMeals' book. It was more frightening than Future Shock. They wrote that one out of every three marriages ended in divorce and that 75 percent of all the existing ones were in big trouble. The rest of it made marriage sound as exciting as a yogurt orgy.

After thirty years of marriage, I felt like a truss in a drugstore window—dependable, serviceable, and downright orthopedic.

Were married people an endangered species? In time would they talk of the days when men and women roamed the earth in wedlock as matched sets? Was it possible that some day cohabital living would be the sanctified relationship and marriage would be frowned on by society?

I could just see my son coming home from school one day ... his shirt torn, blood around his mouth, sneaking to his room to avoid a confrontation.

When cornered, he'd finally admit he had a fight on the playground.

“But why?” I'd ask.

“Because Rich said ... he accused you and Dad ... he said you and Dad were MARRIED!”

“And what did you say?”

“I told him he was a creep. Then he said everyone in school knew it and if you weren't, then how come my last name is the same as yours? Is it true?”

When I finally nodded my head, I could see him shouting angrily, “Why can't you and Dad live together like everyone else's parents?”

I'd explain: “I'm sorry. Your father and I never wanted to embarrass you. Do you think we liked sneaking around checking into hotels with luggage? Wearing my wedding ring on a chain around my neck? Pinching one another in front of your friends to make them think we were not married? I'm glad the charade is over. I'm sick of going to Marriage Encounter meetings in separate cars.”

When pressed as to why we did it, I'd explain we wanted to try marriage to see if it got on our nerves and if it didn't work out, we'd just quietly get a divorce and no one would get hurt that way.

I felt a chill. He was standing in front of the double doors to the refrigerator-freezer again. “What's in this yellow box?” he asked, ripping the top off with his teeth.

It was too late. The film was in his mouth.

When I thought about it, our marriage wasn't exactly made in heaven by a long shot. We had our disagreements. A little ventilation couldn't hurt. The McMeals advised couples to give one another room in their marriage to breathe and to develop as persons. They said couples should try to be more independent of one another.

As a woman who was up to her Astroturf in football, I'd buy that. How many years had I put in trudging out to the stadium every week to endure a two-and-one-half-hour sleeping pill?

Sure, men are supposed,, to get an emotional high out of football. But did anyone care that I've gotten bigger emotional highs out of getting a piece of dental floss caught in my teeth?

I got so bored I used to play games with myself.

I played the Fashion Alphabet with Peggy Ronstadt for a whole season. We used to alternate naming a style worn by other women in the stands from Accordion pleats and Blouses to Yokes and Zippers. The first one who couldn't come up with a style for a letter was penalized by watching the game until a first down was made.

The Hot-Dog-Cola Caper was always good for an hour or so. Disguising my voice, I'd yell down and order a hot dog and a cola from the vendor at the end of the row. Without an eye leaving the game, people passed it down an entire row of 138 people. When it got to the end they'd pass it back to the next row. I'd watch to see how many rows the hot dog and cola covered before someone finally ate it.

Another one Peggy and I always played was Stump the Fans. We'd establish a pool of a couple of bucks and the first one to figure out what the band was trying to spell out on the playing field won. (I once won eight dollars when I correctly identified a tuba player as an anchovy on a field of pizza.)

I wondered what my husband would say if I announced next Saturday afternoon that I wasn't going to the football game with him. I might just find out how secure our marriage really is.

When I talked with my neighbor Lynda, she looked shocked. “You can't be serious. You have a chance to go to a football game with your husband and you're trying to get out of it.”

“What's wrong with that?”

“I'd give anything if my Jim watched football. Why, there's no healthier sport for a man in this world than a football game. Sitting out there in the bleachers with a. thermos of hot coffee and a blanket over your knees, sharing ...”

“What's the matter with you?” I asked. “You're the one who really got ticked off when you had to hire a Goodyear blimp to tell Jim you delivered him a son.”

“I know. Those were the good old days. Now, every Saturday he gets up, fills his thermos, and races toward the stadium. All he talks about are the tight ends, the line and the backfield in motion. And the kickers. He raves about the kickers.”

“I thought you said he didn't like football.” “He doesn't. All he watches are the pompon girls. Fifty of them with spaghetti legs, concave stomachs, and their inflatable made-in-Japan chests. Last Saturday when the team came on the field he said, 'Let's get something to drink while the game is being played, so we'll make it back in time for halftime.' I tell you, they're ruining the sport.”

“Oh c'mon, Lynda,” I said, "no one can stamp out

football. It's like head colds and Doris Day ... it will be with us always, whether we go or not. And don't tell me you wouldn't like to rewrite your marriage contract if you were given a chance."

I wrote down just a few things yesterday that really bug me about our marriage. I'm going to pin it to his pillow. Listen to this.

Takes his leisure suit . . . literally.

Puts toilet paper on the spindle with the paper coming from UNDER the roll just to annoy me.

Lied to me about ultrasuede coming from an endangered species that would ultimately cause an imbalance of nature.

Never shares with me things from the office told to him in confidence that he has sworn never to divulge.

Agrees to shop with me, then leans against the wall like he is awaiting gum surgery.

Said publicly my upper arms looked like cloverleaf rolls.

“Good Lord, that was ten years ago,” said Lynda.

“There is no statute of limitations on fat-arms jokes. And in addition to all of that, he puts down my soap operas.”

The latter had been a bone of contention for years. And I didn't know why. I only watched one, The Wild and the Spoiled.

Of course it was pure fiction. I mean, where else could you see a man who told his wife he loved her . . . with the lights on? But it held my attention.

Soaps had really changed in the years I'd been watching them. They had gone from innocent bits of fluff where the heroine served a lot of coffee and romped through a full-term pregnancy in three weeks, to abortion, alcoholism, incest, cohabital living, drugs, homosexuality, and talking back to mothers.

The heroine of The Wild and the Spoiled was named Erogenique. If you couldn't make it in this world with a name like Erogenique you just weren't trying.

It boggled my mind to imagine what Erogenique did on her days off The Wild and the Spoiled. I used to fantasize that the two of us were roommates in a New York apartment and were as different as night and day. She would rush in breathless every evening, prattling on about a new conquest who would pick her up within the hour and would I be a love and let him in.

Every time she did this, she lost her newfound desire to me. It was always the same. He would stand in the doorway, struck numb by my wholesomeness. He could have had my roommate (who didn't have a dead spot on her entire body), but he wanted me who was content to sit at home and needlepoint a flag.

When he could stand it no longer, he would reach out to pull me close—at which point I would back off and shout “If you want someone with touch control, get yourself a microwave oven:.”

I wondered how Erogenique would have handled thirty years with the NFL, then answered my own question.

A couple of weeks after I had decided to open my marriage to drafts, while I was watching The Wild and the Spoiled Lynda appeared at the door and said, “I'm dying to ask. What happened when you told your husband you weren't going to go to the football games with him?”

“He said, 'Okay.' ”

“That's it?”

“That's it. Shhh, Erogenique is trying to compromise the funeral director at her stepfather's funeral.”

Her sister Emma spoke: “You know the trouble with you, Erogenique, is you don't have a good feeling about yourself. You could never have a relationship with anyone because your independence has made you destructive. You don't like anyone else and you don't like yourself because there is nothing to love. You fill me with loathing and disgust!”

“Did you hear that?” I asked. “I think she's got a point. Erogenique doesn't like Erogenique. She doesn't have a good feeling toward herself.”

“That's the trouble,” yawned Lynda. “Everybody is trying to make you feel good about yourself. You can't be mediocre in this world any more. You have to be perfection itself. Look at that! Even the commercials are pitching it.”

We watched in silence as a housewife called Mildred was being interviewed in the supermarket. The interviewer asked Mildred whether her husband preferred potatoes or stuffing with his chicken.

Mildred, who had given birth to his children, drunk out of the same bathroom glass and caught his colds, said without blinking an eye, “Potatoes. My husband would definitely choose potatoes.”

When they interviewed the husband in the next scene he said, “Stuffing. I would definitely choose stuffing.”

In the third scene his wife is visibly shaken as she stammers, “I didn't know . . . but from here on in I will definitely serve stuffing.”

I turned to Lynda. “Gosh, I don't know,” I said, my eyes glistening with excitement, “I think Bill would have chosen stuffing. What about Jim?”

Lynda looked at me tiredly. “Who cares?” she said. “I could serve him Top of the Stove Moose and he would have had it for lunch. If Mildred had any sense, she'd give that dim bulb stuffing all right . . . right up his nose!”

“What are you so upset about?” I asked.

“I'm upset because I'm sick and tired of sitting around being told how to exhaust myself and pop iron tablets. We're all being manipulated, you know. I read all about how traps are laid for consumers in a new book called Fear of Buying. Supermarkets are like mazes, children drive you crazy to buy things they see on TV, and advertisers have us believing the only time we experience ecstasy is when we drink coffee, take showers, chew gum, or Smell laundry. I've got the book if you'd like to read it.”

I shook my head.

“It's a real eye-opener.” Later that day I was emptying the waste basket in the bedroom when I saw my list of complaints for the new open marriage contract. Someone had wrapped gum in it.

Maybe I was being manipulated . . . but it beat being ignored.

fear of buying

t0 TELL YOU the truth, I had never thought a lot about what motivated me to buy.

As Bob Newhart once remarked about his friendship with Don Rickles, “Someone has to do it.”

I did as I was told. I was fussy about my peanut butter, fought cavities, became depressed over yellow wax buildup, and buried my head in my laundry like I had just witnessed God.

I personally knew women who carried a quart bottle of laxative, three pounds of Mountain-Grown coffee, and a complete line of feminine products in their handbags. I never did that.

But we all believed. We believed if we converted to all the products that marched before our eyes, we could be the best, the sexiest, the freshest, .the cleanest, the thinnest, the smartest, and the first in our block to be regular.

Purchasing for the entire family was the most important thing I had to do.

In 1969, a man walked on the moon. Big deal! That same year I found a pair of gym shoes that would make my son jump higher than a basketball hoop.

A birth-control pill was perfected that would make an impact on the population of the entire world. Hosanna! I discovered a little man for my toilet bowl that cleaned as it flushed.

Our government was involved in a cover-up. So what? It was enough for me to know that while I was in bed reading, my oven was cleaning itself.

My children dominated my buying habits and I knew it. They could sing beer commercials before their eyes could focus.

I remember one day standing in front of a cupboard with eleven boxes of half-eaten cereal ranging from Fortified Blinkies and Captain Sugar to Toasted Wriggles, Heap of Honey, and Cavity Krispies. They didn't snap, crackle, or pop any more. They just lay there on the shelf turning stale year after year.

I told the kids I had had it and there would be no more new cereal brought into the house until we cleaned up what we already had. I even did some fast arithmetic and figured out that a box of Bloated Oats had cost me a total of $ 116.53. This included repairing my tooth, which I chipped on a nuclear submarine in the bottom of the box, throwing part of the cereal to the birds in the snow, necessitating antibiotics, and the cost of packing, shipping, and crating it through three moves.

Eventually we polished off every box, only to be confronted with the most important decision we had ever made as a family: the selection of a new box of cereal.

I personally favored Bran Brittles because they made you regular and offered an African violet as a premium.

One child wanted Chock Full of Soggies because they turned your teeth purple.

Another wanted Jungle Jollies because they had no nutritional value whatsoever.

We must have spent twenty minutes in the cereal aisle before we decided on Mangled Wheat Bits because “when eaten as an after-school snack, will give you X-Ray vision.”

Since the children were grown, we were still under the spell of the hard sell. I had gotten used to buying them Christmas presents that (a) I couldn't spell, (b) had no idea what they were used for, and (c) leaked grease.

Since they were older, their letters at Christmas were a far cry from Christmas past when they wrote “Dear Santa: Please leave me a new doll and a bike.”

Mesmerized by some commercial, I would get a list from them that spelled out their desire right down to the catalogue number.

“An RF-60 FM stereo wireless radio chamber. Ask for Frank; five percent off list price if you pay cash.”

Or “273 auto thyristor bounce flash 9-90 with head tilt for the big gift and for the stocking stuffer a couple of rolls of EX 135-30 Ektachrome ASA 64-19.”

I didn't think too much about Fear of Buying until one night after I had lugged in twelve bags of groceries (while everyone else hid out in the John) and my husband poked through the bags and said, “What are we having for dinner? A pot of mums, a room deodorizer, a bag of charcoal, or an encyclopedia?”

That tore it. I slammed down the bag and said, “Is that the thanks I get for taking care of this family's needs? It's a jungle out there and I go into it every week . . . inexperienced people driving shopping carts, kids throwing things into your basket, coupons to clip, lists to juggle, labels to read, fruits to pinch, toilet paper to squeeze, sales to find—and as for the encyclopedias, YOU try to find the S's! Oh sure, the A to Al was a piece of cake . . . fifty-nine cents each, five thousand of them shouting Take me! Take me!' But just try to buy them when they're three ninety-eight and they get a limited number of S's because everyone has dropped out. All the good words are in the S's.”

“You should hear yourself,” he said. “Is it really that important? ”

“Important? Do you want your kids to go through life not knowing the meaning of SEX, the Sabbath, Satire, Scruples, Sin and Status . . . not to mention Sales?”

“The trouble with you,” he said, “is you're a pushover for every advertising gimmick that comes down the pike. They could sell you anything.”

It was easy for him to say. Men didn't get the pressure from advertising that women did. I'd seen them on the tube. All men ever did was sit around grabbing all the gusto they could get, eating cereal that made them champions, and having a swell time talking to a tub of butter.

When they talked to their broker . . . everyone listened. Even the labels in their shorts danced and had a good time.

Oh, occasionally they'd run a car up the side of a mountain or slap on some after-shave and hit the ports, but mostly it was women who carried the responsibility for the entire family.

And no one cared.

If commercials were supposed to make me feel good about myself, they were failing miserably. My paper towels turned to lace in my hands. My cough medicine ran out at 2 a.m., and my garbage bags broke on impact with the garbage.

It's funny I hadn't thought about it before. I was responsible for my husband's underarms being protected for twelve hours. I was responsible for making sure my children had a well-balanced breakfast. I alone was carrying the burden for my dog's shiny coat and spritzing just the right amount of lemon throughout the house so they wouldn't pucker to death. When my daughter's love life fell through it was up to me to remind her that whiter teeth would bring him back.

I was reflecting on my responsibilities when the commercial came on of the husband who came home after a twelve-hour day, beat, depressed and exhausted. He opened the door and seventy-five people jumped up and yelled, “Happy Birthday! Surprise!” The man grabbed his wife, kissed her, and said, “Honey, what a surprise.”

She backed off from him like he was a three-day-old dead chicken and said, “What a breath! We'd better do something about it ... and FAST!”

You would have thought that would have taken the hats and horns out of the occasion if anything would. Instead, we see them in the bathroom, where he is gargling his bad breath into remission. The last scene is one of pure joy. He has finally been allowed to attend his own party and she is beaming, knowing that she has once again saved her husband from himself.

Couldn't the big jerk tell if he had the breath of a camel? Did his wife have to do everything? I was interrupted by my husband, who came out of the bedroom holding a sport shirt. “Honey,” he grinned good-naturedly, “I hate to tell you this, but there's a ring around my collar.”

I looked up and snapped, “What a coincidence! It matches the one around your neck!”

I don't know what made me say it ... only the resentment of being in charge of everyone's welfare, I guess.

I had been naive. I should have realized it the night I showered, put perfume behind each knee, and heard my husband snore in the darkness . . . thus capping the first PG-rated Aviance Night in the history of cosmetics.

I dug out the Fear of Buying to find out in what other ways I was being exploited. It was revealing, to say the least. It said grocery shopping is one of the last of the little-known sciences in the world. All the experts know is that it is demanding; it requires great concentration and split-second timing.

For years, researchers have been trying to pin down why women buy as they do, and they have discovered that when a woman enters the store and her hands curl around a cart handle something happens.

Their “eyeblink rate” drops to fourteen a minute, putting them in a hypnoidal trance, which is the first stage of hypnosis. Some of them are even unable to distinguish friends who speak to them.

They cover an aisle in less than twenty seconds, spending on the average of ninety-three cents a minute. Everything in the store has been researched, designed, and color coded to make you buy it. A shopper doesn't stand a chance.

The real stress situation comes at the checkout. Assuming you are able to stave off impulse buying and stick to your list, the real test comes when you unload your groceries on the conveyor belt to be tallied. Here you have candy, gum, magazines, half-price items, special purchases, balloons, breath mints, cigarettes, and fountain pens. Steady now ... if you can hang on until the bell of the cash register sounds, your blink rate will be up to forty-five a minute and the trance will be broken. You will be able to function once more on a normal level.

Just knowing what was happening to me proved to be of enormous help.

The next time I went to the supermarket I whipped through it like 0. J. Simpson making his plane. At the checkout, however, I became uneasy as I saw a line. One woman was shuffling through her handbag trying to find identification for cashing her check.

I tossed a package of razor blades into my basket.

The next woman found a hole in her bag of brown sugar and we waited while the carry-out boy went back to get her a fresh package. I added a kite to my cart.

Two more to go.

The man had a cart full of bottles that he had been saving since glass was invented. It was his fault I bought the licorice whips.

The lady in front of me only had three items, but the register tape ran out and had to be replaced. Let the patio lights and the birdseed be on her conscience.

Finally it was my turn. The clerk began to tally up my order when she asked, “Do you want that book or are you going to read it here?”

“I'll take it!” I said.

The register bell rang up the total and I came out of my trance. But it was too late. I had a paperback of Looking/or Mr. Goodbody under my arm.