September 12th, 11:45 PM

Sometimes you have to talk about things, but you can’t talk about things to just anybody cause they’re the kind of things you wouldn’t talk about with your friends.  I mean, I have friends.  Some of them I love and some of them I trust, but I couldn’t talk to them about some things.  Not because I don’t trust them, but because they’re the kind of things you wouldn’t want anyone to know about.  I mean, they envy my marriage.  They think we have it so together.  They love my kids.  My husband has a good job.  They see the facade, the beautiful painting on the wall, but not the cracks behind it.  They don’t see the decayed, rotting wood.  All they see is the love.  How we look at each other.  The way we play.  The painting.  It’s so beautiful.  I can’t talk to them.  I don’t know what else to do.  So, I’m going to talk to you.  I mean, I can talk to you, can’t I?  I know I can talk to you.

September 16th : 1:13 AM

Love.  What is love if not the craziest concept ever created.  You give yourself over to someone as if that someone were God; a merciful God, who would watch over you and handle you as if your were the most precious pearl in the universe.  You lose yourself to someone, surrendering all trust, dismissing everything life has taught you about the animal savagery of the  jungle; the basic laws of nature.  The fly landing on a flower to feed on the sweet juice of its leaf.  It drinks, oblivious to the lizard that lies in wait,  pouncing, swallowing, sucking it into the great empty abyss of nothingness.  The bird swoops from the sky and snatches the lizard. The snake in the grass catches the bird and so on and so on and so on.  Thus is the law of the universe.  Thus is the image of false Gods.  Love.  What the **** is love?

Anger.  

Anger is love.  Anger is the ultimate measure of love.  

How angry and vicious can you be?  

How much do you love?

September 19th  9:07 AM

I have this really sick desire.

I said this to him when we were lying in bed this morning.  He took the day off from work.  He actually got up and got the kids off to school and then he brought me breakfast in bed.  I don’t remember the last time he brought me breakfast in bed.  I just remember the last time.

He made eggs over easy with toast and orange juice and coffee.  I ate slowly and then crawled out of bed and showered.  I had stepped out of the shower and was toweling drying my hair, when I thought of it.  I ran to the kitchen and took out the jug of water and then slipped back into the bathroom.  I used the hair dryer and put on the make up and found something lacey to wear.  It wouldn’t hurt.  He was thinking of it.  He wanted this time, but all I could think of was the last time.  So, when it was over and we were snuggled, I said it.

I have this really sick desire.

His big brown eyes grow wide.  He sits up and looks at me.  “What?”

I don’t answer.  I don’t want to answer.  We are in our early 40’s and I pushed him down the aisle 12 years ago.  I had to push him down the aisle.  I never met anyone like him.  I fell flat on my face in love.  I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him, of not having him by my side.  I couldn’t live without surrendering.  What would I do?  How would I go on?  Questions.  Stupid questions, but real.  How many times have you asked yourself those very questions?  How much hatred have you felt for someone you love?  Can you hate someone you love and still love them?  Or, are the ones you love the only ones you can truly hate?  I don’t know.  Do you?  Can you tell me?

“What?”

He doesn’t see the anger.  He doesn’t understand the pay back.  He only knows the surrender; the simple collapse of love.  He loves it.  He exploits it.  He uses it to his advantage.  I know this.  I’ve known this for a while.  He’s the better lover.  He blows me away and there are times I frustrate him and it angers me.  It enrages me and it enables him to exploit me and I hate him for it.  Sometimes, I just hate him so much, but I love him.  I know that I love him.  I wouldn’t hate him at all if I didn’t love him, so why do I feel so guilty?  He was thoughtless.  He was selfish.  It had nothing to do with love.

He plops down on the pillow.  

“I hate when you do that.”

What?

“Start to tell me something and then let it go.”

You’ll think I’m sick.

“No I won’t.”

Yeah.  You will.

“I love you.  If I thought you were sick, I never would have married you.” 

He turns on his side and puts his arm around me, rubbing the tummy I work so hard to keep flat.  He loves the belly.  He kisses the belly and occassionally comments on the chocolate I’m eating, only not when I’m eating it.  He saves his comments for those intimate moments when he kisses the belly and maybe notices that I’ve put on some pounds and my heart sinks into the sack of pounds that I spend the next several weeks, killing myself to lose.

I just. 

I pause.  

I’ve never done it before.  You won’t like it.

“What?”

He sits back up and this time he’s running his hand through his hair.

I want to-

you know, 

take care of myself, with you watching.  Like I use to.  Before we met.

He stares at me a moment,  a grin crossing his face.

“Okay,” he says.  “Do it.”

I don’t want to do it here.

“Well where else, then.  Outside?”

The bathroom.

“You want to go into the bathroom and do this?” 

He scratches his head, again.  

“What are you going to do?  Sit on the throne?”

The tub.

“You want to run a bath?”

No.  I want to put one foot up on the ledge and-

I hesitate.  I’m large.  He loves that its large.  He loves that he can actually get it between the tips of two fingers.  

I want to stand over you.  I want to pull on it, catch it with tweezers and drive myself  crazy and I want to do all this with you lying beneath me, watching, until I just explode.

He doesn’t know what to say to this.  There’s nothing in it for him, but there is a part of me that believes he loves me and some of the things he expects of me are just because of that love, promised forever.  Isn’t that why people say, I do - because this is it?  This is the one?  This is forever?

“All right,” he says and I’m feeling guilty.  I should just say, forget it and then I think about the last time and the love consumes me all over again, only it translates to hate.

We get out of bed together and walk to the bathroom, the master bathroom with the big tub that’s also a jacuzzi.  We turn on the lights and I watch him step into the tub.  He lies flat down in the tub, staring at me and I put one foot in when he stops me.

“Tweezers?”

I smile.  I’m trembling.  I step out and open a draw, removing a pair of tweezers.  I step back into the tub, telling myself he deserves this, focusing on the other night; the selfishness, the cruelty.  I’m standing over his chest and he slides down a little so that I am right over his face.  I can barely hold it in anymore, but I have to.  I want to.  I lift a foot up on the ledge and use the fingers of one hand to play while the other holds the tweezers.  At first, I didn’t think I could turn myself on, but it’s too perfect.  He’s lying right below, watching, waiting and it excites me, to think I’m going to get away with this.  I toy, tease, coaxing it out.  My other hand joins in.  My eyes are closed.  I feel his fingers lightly caress my calves.  I feel the pinch of the tweezers and I tug.  I swear I’m going to fall, but I find the strength to actually hang on and then, yes.  It happens.  It happens.  The whole bathroom disappears into the pleasure zone of the brain as I drop the tweezers and empty my bladder all over his **** face.  God.  You could die from the pleasure of his writhing body.  His hands shooting up to block the flow and his sliding down the tub to wriggle away.  I bet I drank and held a liter of water for this.

What did he say?  Did he call me a bitch?  Does it really matter?  I step out of the tub, grabbing the hand towel to wipe myself.  I toss the towel at him.  His eyes are burning.  He can’t find the knob to turn on the shower.  I leave him and the bathroom and the words trailing behind me.

Oh, baby.  I love you so much.

I hear him turn on the shower and I shiver.  I’ve just done the most disgusting thing in my life and the worst part of it all is, I enjoyed every second of it.

September 21st: 4:05 PM

Krystal came home from school today with straight A’s on her report card AND a note, requesting a meeting with Rob and myself to discuss moving her ahead one grade.  I, relunctantly, called Rob to give him the news.  He’s been nasty, cold, angry about the other afternoon.  I’ve kind of been enjoying it.  I still feel weird about it.  I don’t mean I feel weird about what I did to him.  He had it coming to him.  I feel weird about the way I enjoyed it.  I mean, I really enjoyed it and I don’t know why.  It was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever done to anyone.  I know it was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever done to anyone.  So, why did it put me through the roof?

Anyway, Rob came to the phone with a snap.

“What.”

It wasn’t a question.  It was a statement.  It was the thinly veiled, short hand version of what the **** are you bothering me for.  Should I tell him to hold on, I have to go pee?  What.  I’m at work.  I go to work to get away from you and you’re calling, waltzing right into my work.

Krystal pulled straight A’s and they want to push her ahead a grade.

“Really?”

He was surprised.  He was really genuinely surprised.  We had decided, at the advice of the principle, to have her repeat the second grade because her reading scores were so low.  It was a horrible thing for us to do, but we thought it best, or, at least Rob thought it best.  All of her friends were moving ahead, to the third grade and “my parents are keeping me behind?  What kind of parents would do such a thing?  Do you know what kind of fun they’re going to make, next year?”

She was right, too.  It was a horrible year, but instead of withdrawing and caving in, she buckled down and worked so hard at improving her skills, we had to take books out of her hand and fight with her to go to bed.  Now she loves to read and she even likes to write.  Her writing is pretty good, too.  I wish I could write like her, but I’ve never been very good at much of anything.

“Wow,” he says and for the first time in two days, I’m a welcomed visitor.  “We should celebrate.”

What do you think we should do?

“Ask her to name her favorite restaurant and when I get home from work, we’ll all go out to dinner.”

I told him how nice that would be.  We hadn’t been out as a family in a long time.  Not since Donnie.  We went out once, since Donnie.  Krystal and Ryan both wanted a balloon.  When we got home, they both raced to their rooms and wrote notes that they rolled up and tied the string of the balloons around.  We had to go outside with them.  We had to let the balloons go up into the air, up into heaven as Krystal put it so Donnie could read the notes she and Ryan wrote.  Rob turned around and walked in the house so he could cry.  He didn’t want the kids to see him cry.  He still cries, sometimes.  I don’t cry, at all. What does crying change.  It doesn’t change anything.  I don’t know why I don’t cry.   Do you think I should cry?  Is it abnormal, not to cry?