Married Sex (8 page)

Chapter 18

Hidden in the Metro section of the Sunday
Times
is a feature called “Sunday Routine” that chronicles, hour by hour, how prominent New Yorkers spend their day off.

Almost without exception, these people used to sleep in on Sundays. Then they got dogs—from shelters, they're quick to say—and now their pets rouse them early, so their day begins with walks in the park. They have coffee in mugs—always in mugs—and read the paper. The real paper, the paper paper. Food is optional. Maybe toast or oatmeal. They catch up on Facebook posts and are surprised by how many “friends” they've acquired since they last checked. They hit the gym and the flea market; Zabar's is a frequent destination. Night falls and, at last, they feed. Fish. Kale. Wakame, nine-grain Japanese rice, salmon roe for protein. Their wild excess? A shared dessert. A favorite show on TV, saved for Sunday night. A book. Then sleep, surrounded by dogs.

These are rich, textured lives, and these people are, for all their prominence, surprisingly restrained. No lunch at Balthazar or Swifty's. No jaunts in the Jaguar to hang with hedge funders in Greenwich. And most of all: no sex. Partners, lovers, and spouses are mentioned, but carnal activity is omitted. Relationships are presented as old shoes. And someone always goes to sleep earlier.

Our Sundays are different.

We had the dream child: no desire for pets, plants, or any Disney destination. So even when Ann was here, Blair slept in on Sundays. I'd be up early, clear a week's worth of personal email, and—I was an English major, so old habits die hard—read the paper, the real paper, marking the articles I thought Blair shouldn't miss. At nine, using an old-fashioned espresso machine, I'd make Blair a double shot and deliver it to her with the paper. I'd pay bills and read about investing, which I'm not good at but want to be. Ann, afflicted with teenage narcolepsy, would wake up at eleven, text her friends, hit me up for money, and abandon us for the day.

Since Ann left, we've been spending Sundays on the street. After soup and a sandwich, we head out, walking fast, destination unknown, returning at dusk. Dinner is pasta with vegetables. A long bath for Blair. Beer and the last football game of the weekend for me. Then a short, friendly session in bed—what a friend calls “fucking lite”—and dreamland.

Decades of fantasy and anticipation, then you get what you wanted—not surprising that I felt drained and slept late. Blair, up early, seemed frazzled. I read this as a delayed reaction. What kind of reaction … I didn't know. And I wanted to. So I brought espresso and settled into bed next to her.

The way to begin this conversation required delicacy, tact, and finesse. Instead, I said, “My head is full of sentences that are so amazing to me I can't quite accept them as true.”

“Like?”

Where I was coming from: adolescence, the sequel. In my head, this was exactly the right time to review the night's highlight reel. Like this was a panel on ESPN.

“I watched a woman go down on my wife. I fucked another woman while my wife watched. I fucked my wife while another woman sucked her nipples.”

“I was there. Stop.”

“Okay. But you'll note that
my wife
was in every sentence.”

Blair was starting to smolder. “Well, you were very careful that way.”

“Careful?”

“You made sure I was always included.”

“Nothing ‘careful' about it—that was the whole point.”

What was this? Blair felt set up? It couldn't be; Blair wasn't someone who rewrote the past and then insisted it had always been just that way.

I thought: It must be something else. And it was.

“If it had been what Jean wanted, just the two of you,” Blair said, “would that have been better?”

“No.”

“Just as good?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because … because last night was about more than getting off.”

“There was
more
?” And how I would like to report that Blair's tone might be called quizzical. “Last night was
entirely
about getting off.”

“There was no
idea
involved?”

“Oh. Right. An idea: ‘It's not cheating if your wife's there,'”
Blair said, quoting me, her tone tight. “Not exactly a ringing endorsement of monogamy.”

But it was, my darling. And it is. And that is not news to you. That view—that
idea
, if you will—is the distillation of more than a decade of labor in the fields of matrimonial law. You have heard me work these ideas out over many dinners. And you have watched me struggle—for my clients, for myself, and perhaps, though I have no way of knowing because you keep so much of yourself private, for you—with the challenge of monogamy.

Because if we're honest, every time we look at an attractive person, we think: I wonder what it would be like to …

And so I figured, at least in theory, I had found a way for couples—for some couples—to relieve the pressure of monogamy without wrecking a marriage.

“Look at us,” I said. “Is our marriage weaker or stronger today? I say stronger. I fucked another woman while my wife watched—and the world didn't end. My wife—”

“
Stop it
!
”

“And another woman—”

“Shut the fuck up! I mean it!
Not another word
!
”

My parents are screamers. As a kid, I found their rage terrifying—ten-minute thunderstorms that came without warning and ended just as abruptly, never to be mentioned again. Those blitzes made me fear all domestic upsets. That's one reason I bonded with Blair. She's the opposite of my mother: steady, considerate, and slow to anger. Outbursts are not her thing. Snark is. And when she's in that mode, picking you apart with nasty little comments, you might almost wish for rage.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay.” I got out of bed, grabbed last night's clothes, and disappeared to the farthest corner of the apartment to try and figure out what had happened to Blair while we slept.

Jared called. Blair said we weren't going out, so he came over. Jared likes football, so he watched the Giants game with me. Blair, in a better mood, joined us.

Jared doesn't work. He doesn't have to. In his twenties, he invented a kids' dessert called Frozen Fruit Guts—the flavors were Rotten Raspberry, Mushy Melon, and Grisly Grape—that he sold to one of the biggest food companies for a fortune. He went on to write short, funny books (
Feminism in Sicily
and
Last Chiropractor Before Freeway
) before hitting some kind of personal wall. His last writing, if you can call it that, involved naming racehorses for friends (Long Shot Kick the Bucket and Rocking Horse Winner). He's stuck, maybe unraveling. But with a live audience, he can be as witty and ironic as he was when we met him.

That Jared is Blair's best friend makes total sense—Jared is gay. Many women with busy or inattentive husbands have a friend like this; the man is never going to hit on her, and she is never going to suggest that what they have is really so much deeper than friendship. And her husband approves.

I
more
than approve. I
like
Jared. In a city where you hear two opinions on any topic but rarely a third, Jared throws off one fresh opinion after another. I'd never watched football with him, and I couldn't imagine he liked to spend a Sunday afternoon watching sports, but here he was. And here was his offering as a broadcast analyst: “Football is a gay pageant.”

Who would we rather listen to—the Fox announcer or Jared? No contest. We muted the sound.

Jared's voice is a rich baritone, but he pushed it deeper. “The offensive line assumes the position. The quarterback presses himself against the center …”

His repertoire wasn't infinite, or maybe there's only so much innuendo that football can support. After a few plays, he called it quits.

Blair took over.

“Oh, look,” she said, in an exact imitation of Jared. “The tight end is going deep. The quarterback hits him, and … he's in!”

We laughed, applauded Blair, traded football for a movie with subtitles, and ordered Chinese takeout: egg roll (170 calories), Kung Pao Chicken (434 calories per cup, 63 percent of them fat), and Tsingtao beer (153 calories). Somewhere in there was protein. Jared, thin as a stick, had three bowls of chicken.

In the evening, Ann made her Sunday call. Liked her classes, liked her dorm, still liked her high school boyfriend, who was now at Stanford. Might one of us, both of us, come visit?

Ann and I have a ritual on the phone.

“Who's the best girl?” I ask as I'm signing off.

“Me,” she says.

“And who loves you the most?”

“
Me.
”

We laugh, and I pass her on to Blair.

Ann must have asked about the weekend. Blair said something about a movie. Ann must have asked which one. I would have named the movie we'd just watched with Jared, but Blair blurted out, “
Y Tu Mamá También
.” And blushed.

Chapter 19

What happens in our lives most days is domestic, grooved. If she has no official obligations, Blair walks home from Barnard and does two laps on the reservoir track. A little later I come home and assemble what passes for cocktails and kibbles: wine, fruit, and a chunk of cheese. Blair returns, not even winded, showers, and joins me at the dining room table. We catch up. Have sushi delivered. Separate. Read, work, reconvene, and …

But on Monday, I arrived home to find Blair at the dining room table, wine already open.

“A nice surprise,” I said, and kissed her.

“A day of surprises,” she said.

I hadn't noticed the object in front of her. She turned it over. A simply framed black-and-white, five-by-seven photograph of Jean Coin. A self-portrait in the Avedon style: vivid flesh—bare shoulders and chest, ending at the top swell of her breasts—against a white background. For all the skin, it was a chaste picture; your eye was drawn to her face.

In the lower right corner, in neat handwriting:

For Blair & David, in fond friendship. XXXOX, Jean
.

“Well then,” I said, and filled my glass. “An intimate photograph by a photographer who never takes pictures of people or allows herself to be photographed.”

Blair poured more wine.

“Did you see her?” I asked.

“She left it with the doorman.”

“What do you make of it?”

“I don't know,” Blair said. “I can't stop looking at it.”

“I'd be stunned if that wasn't her intent.”

“It makes me feel like there's someone here we might want to know.” She considered how that sounded, and added, quickly, “As a person.”

“How about as a stalker?”

“David,
please
.” Blair set the photo down. “This is her version of a thank-you note.”

“‘Here's something to remember me by when you are old and gray and full of sleep and nodding by the fire.' No, I don't think so.”

“You're so cold about her,” Blair said.

“I was misquoting Yeats. I thought you'd be impressed.”

“You were showing off. What you're basically doing is … dismissing her.”

“Not at all. I'd like to talk to her. Pick her brain about investing in photography.”

“As I said:
cold
. For you, she might as well have been a hooker who met us in a hotel.”

This is what happens in a long-running marriage: Your partner not only knows
how
you think but
what
. Last week I would have described Jean Coin as a woman who knew what she wanted, went after it, adjusted to accommodate others, and got most of what she wanted. I admired that. Then.

Now the only difference for me between Jean and the escort who would have done our bidding in a hotel room was that Jean didn't fake her pleasure. In every other way, we were a transaction to her. As she was to us. If she gave me advice about investing in photography, that would also be a transaction.

Blair hadn't made this turn. It seemed she'd made another one. The opposite one.

“When I look at the picture,” she said, “I see kindness, and intelligence, and peace. And when I think of a hooker …”

The sky darkened. The heavens opened. Tears. Sudden tears.

“Darling …” I said, and moved to hold her.

“When I was a kid …” More words were in her mouth; Blair just couldn't say them. Time marinated. “When I was a kid …” A gulp for air. “I wanted to be a ballet dancer.” Another gulp. “I read everything I could find about dance. I remember this piece about a great dancer who didn't think he was as great as his hero. He said, ‘Jacques takes one step onstage—just one—and you know who he is. Because he is completely, totally himself.'”

“Blair …”

“Jean has that. You can see it. She has it.”

“In the picture. You have no idea if—”

“Whatever,” she said, beyond arguing the point. “I want that, David. I want it so much. I can't imagine how that would feel. To be myself. Totally, completely myself.”

“But you are!”

“I am so far from it! And you know it. Look how I was with Jean. Curious but careful. Open-minded but prim. The good girl. Always the good girl.”

“There must be a hundred kids who take you as a model for—”

“In my
job
? I'm
especially
fake there. I never say the blunt, harsh, ugly things when they need to be said. I smooth things over. I'm a vanilla Christian who wants to make it nice for everybody. And I hate that. Just hate it.”

Another spasm of sobs. I waited it out.

“I don't see how you do it,” she said. “You spend all day dealing with people's problems. The same ones over and over. And you never crack. How do you do it?”

I try not to go there. What's the point? If there were parades for people who suck it up and get on with their lives, the marching would never end.

“I think of the people who depend on me,” I said.

“I do too. It's not enough.”

“Try thinking about our great good luck.”

“What?”

“Do you remember ‘Shock and Awe'—the start of the Iraq War?”

“We bombed their cities,” Blair said. “Killed thousands of civilians.”

I corrected her: “We killed
children.
And cruelty to children … I can never understand it, can never hear about it without … well, you know …”

I had to pause.

“Ann was little then. I used to take her to the playground and watch her swing. Laughing. Shouting. She was just the happiest kid. And I'd look up at the sky … blue and empty, with clouds out of a painting … and I'd think the same thing every time: The children in Iraq live under this same sky. How does it happen that
my
child is spared? Why don't the bombs drop on
us
?
And I know there's no equation that says if I go to work and comfort people who have no idea how …
comfortable
they are that she is spared and you are spared, but …”

Now it was my turn to choke up.

“I am so sorry about this … thing with Jean,” I said. “It's all my fault.”

“There's no blame here.”

“I pushed it. Saturday night never had to happen.”

“No. It was good.”

A fireball of a sun turned the buildings gold. The last time we'd sat at this table, how playful we were, how happy, how hot. And now we were in another place, where you do something that seems simple and discreet, and it turns out not to be, and you can't get back to where you were. Unintended consequences. The deadliest trap.

What I kept coming back to: This great taboo event was such a small social experiment. A local adventure, two cab rides. How could three hours—not even a night out—have any aftereffect?

Why did Blair have such a high opinion of Jean?

I thought I had the right answer, the answer that sounds smart but doesn't hold up: money.

Blair and I have no trust funds, no inheritance, no seven-figure cushion. We're dependent on income. Always feeling vulnerable, always aware that we're in the upper-middle-class poverty cycle—running on the hamster wheel, no way to escape, flush only until luck fades.

Jean's life was ours but flipped. She was a successful solo act, unburdened by school bills, unworried about loved ones, every day new and rich with possibility. That made Blair—wife, mother, wage slave—feel as if she'd aimed too low, risked too little, achieved nothing great.

If we'd come from money, who could Blair have become? And how much more could I have been? And now, locked into our professional identities as much by fear and inertia as by school bills, how much more could we ever be?

True. All true. And all wrong. Money—Jean's money, our money, the New York obsession with money—was exactly not what Blair was thinking.

“We should get together with Jean again,” Blair said.

“Excuse me?”

“Jean. You. Me. Together. One more time.”

I felt something in my head that was like nothing I'd ever experienced. If I call it carbonation, that's not quite it. But there was definitely a kind of brain sizzle, like water splashed on a roaring fire. I was speechless, uncomprehending.

Blair waited me out.

“Funny,” I said, struggling for a sane, light tone. “I distinctly remember you saying, ‘We're not going to make a habit of this.'”

“And we're not. This is it. With Jean. With anybody.”

I poured a glass of wine, busying myself like an actor in an antique melodrama.

“Why the change of heart?”

My self-control sounded impressive, but it was a sham. Not that Blair noticed. She didn't need my question—she wanted to talk. Whatever came next had been percolating for some time.

“I wanted to say yes to new things, and this was the first yes,” she said. “But I cheated. I didn't commit. I watched Jean. I watched you. And I watched myself watching myself watching myself … I did it all wrong. Now I want to get it right.”

“Pick something else.”

“I'll pick a lot of things. But this first.”

“Blair, please …”

“I want to confront this.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” she said, with complete conviction. “Yes.”