The Secret Confessions of a Horny House Wife

 A short story that gives a flavor of things between Donny and me…

They dozed after sex.  At one point, Bobby woke up and said to her, “I just had the coolest dream.”  Florence opened her eyes.  The room was dark.  The light from the street outside the window shone through the blinds of Bobby’s empty apartment just enough for her to see the black shadows where his blue eyes would be.

“There were these little Catholic school girls and they were hunting teddy bears with uzis” he said.

A whole world opened up before her: his religious southern upbringing; his disgust with anything falsely sentimental or cute; his love of violent Japanese karate films; the harsh language his mother used to communicate with him.  To Florence, Bobby’s dream was a wonderful web of clues to his psyche, and if she could scale the sticky, intricate network of clues, then when she reached the center she would understand not only him, but his motivations.  That just might lead her to the answer to the question that seemed constantly in the back of her brain, like a hungry, pulsating bell: “ding, dong, ding, dong, what do I mean to you, Bobby?”

“Why do you think you dreamed that?” she asked him.

“I don’t know, but it was cool,” he answered. 

“Well, don’t you want to understand it, to know what it means?” she pressured.

“No, not really,” he said.  “I like that it doesn’t make any sense.  It’s just random.  It’s like a ride I can take in my mind.  If I knew what it meant, then I wouldn’t be riding it anymore; it would be riding me.” 

Bobby thought about the women before Florence: the professional boxer who needed him to hold her after each of her bouts while she cried; the suicidal Ph.D. student who finally had slit her wrists, relieving him of the responsibility for keeping her alive; the lawyer who insisted he tie her up while they had sex.  To Bobby, the women of his life seemed like an endless parade of requirements.  Florence was different.   

Bobby was different for Florence, as well: he was accessible.  Her parade had featured an actor who recited lines convincingly, but wasn’t intelligent enough to follow anything she said; a husband who had lived alone for five years in the bedroom next to hers; and then a string of married men whose bodies were hers for an afternoon, until they went back to belonging to their wives. 

After Florence’s divorce, she and Bobby had met online.  Their conversation was challenging, but relaxed.  The sex was close, hushed, intense, and satisfying.  It had been almost three months. 

Florence spoke again.  “You’d just prefer not to understand it?” she asked him once more.  It was dark in his bed, but she felt him nod “yes.” 

“Okay,” she whispered, and she let go of the web.  She closed her eyes and felt herself begin to float out into space.  Her trajectory was slow and pleasant, but nonetheless disconcerting.  The stickiness of the web had been soothing, if confining. 

The teddy bears and the Catholic school girls with their uzis were calling Bobby back.  He looked at Florence.  Her brown eyes were closed.  He could see she was trying to get somewhere, and he knew she needed him.  She opened her eyes.  He rested his warm lips on her forehead and held her hands in his. 

They lay in bed like that for a long time, holding hands in the dark, and looking into what they were sure were each other’s eyes.