44 Chapters About 4 Men (21 page)

I want to take him with me everywhere. I want us to live a hundred years and die at the same time. I want them to mix our cremated remains together, dump us into a river, and watch our mingled ashes swirl like coffee creamer all the way to the ocean. I want our souls (okay, my soul and his, whatever he has, operating system?) to find each other on the other side as soon as possible just so that we can fall in love and make more babies and do it all over again.

I just
also
want him to fuck my brains out.

It’s a beautiful life Ken has given me, one filled with security and laughter and intelligent conversation and honeymoons in Paris and well-behaved children with long attention spans and cute noses and his-and-hers sinks and 401(k)s and well-manicured lawns. I just wish the orgasms matched the drapes, if you know what I mean. And I wish the drapes had my name tattooed on them somewhere highly visible and brazenly unprofessional.

Is that so much to ask?

Between his height, bone structure, unruly black hair, and giant, left-leaning cock, Hans could totally have been a body double for Tommy Lee in that Pamela Anderson sex tape—if it weren’t for all the tattoo discrepancies, that is. He was a sensitive, romantic soul camouflaged by the body and attire of a six-foot-three-inch heavy-metal bassist with a raging case of ADHD. Bless His Heart, as I’ve taken to calling him, might have ruined me for everyone.

That motherfucker would tell me I was beautiful
every day
—with sincerity, and eye contact, and a gentle caress of my cheek with his giant callous man hands. He would buy me big, ostentatious bouquets of flowers—for no reason. He would hold my hand—in public. He’d paint my toenails while we watched
Sex and the City
. And whenever Mr. and Mrs. Oppenheimer were out of town, Hans would drag a TV into their opulent master bathroom so that we could soak in the clam-shaped splendor of their garden tub as Leeloo and Korben Dallas fell in love all over again.

Hans was also every bit as distractible and impulsive as I described him in that bullshit journal entry I left for Ken to find. In fact, the part about him veering off course due to a bunch of twinkling lights was based on actual events. It was a steamy summer night, much like the one in the story, and we were driving across a dam near Bless His Heart’s parents’ house. Before we could make it to the other side, BHH slammed on the brakes, lurched his ancient BMW over to the shoulder of the bridge, yanked me out of the car, and plopped us both down on the guardrail, doing his patented twirl-me-in-the-air-and-set-me-down-sideways-on-his-lap move along the way. I held on to his big shoulders for dear life, thinking this crazy tattooed motherfucker was about to jump into the lake.

At that point, nothing would have surprised me. I’d learned pretty quickly that, with Hans, all I could do was just hang on and enjoy the ride.

When I finally realized I was not about to plummet twenty-five feet into the churning, blackened water below, I looked up and saw what had him so enraptured. The surface of the lake looked as if someone had taken the night sky and spread it out like a picnic blanket before us. A million crystalline points of light billowed and swayed below while a million more floated just out of reach in the thick summer air above. I wanted to stay there forever, but BHH’s emorection wouldn’t allow it.

Eventually, we retreated to the car where we spent the next hour and a half cuddling, gazing into each other’s souls, and making love while Jimmy Eat World competed with the sound of rushing water plummeting below us. It felt as though we were in our own personal snow globe of ecstasy, only the white flecks swirling around us weren’t snowflakes but stars. Stars everywhere—in the sky, on the water, splashed in ink across his skin and in my eyes as they rolled heavenward on a crest of pleasure.

The only thing that prevented
that
particular lovefest from going down in history as the best sex of my life was the fact that it took place in a
car
. I damn near required skin grafts on my knees after all the grinding they did against the door and center console that night.

I guess that’s how you know you’re a grown-up, Journal. If you’re old enough to complain about the upholstery burn, you’re too damn old to be getting plowed in a sedan on the side of the road.

Dating a rocker (even one who lived in the bonus room above his parents’ garage), was kind of like having your cake and eating it, too. Actually, it was more like having a gay best friend and being able to sit on his face. While both are into fashion and makeup and gossip and feelings and experimental anal play, the rock star wouldn’t insist that you wear a strap-on and douse yourself in Drakkar Noir first. He’d merely
appreciate
it.

Sounds fantastic, right?

It is.

Until it’s
not
.

Do yourself a favor, Journal. If you happen to fall in love with a rock star, good for you. Congratulations. Don’t marry him. Trust me on this. You’ll want to have his freakishly tall, dark, inattentive babies. Don’t do it. You’ll want to sign a six-month lease on an apartment and get a betta fish with him. Don’t fucking do it.

Because when that shit goes south—and it will, in spectacular fashion—who do you think is going to lose all her deposits and have to fashion a tiny Viking-style funeral pyre for sweet little Betta Bob Thornton all by herself? Who do you think is going to find her bestie in bed with him the next day? Who do you think is going to get a phone call at five a.m. a week later to come get him from the hospital because he was sad and wanted to be put on suicide watch, but the attending psychologist sized him up in ten minutes and knew he wasn’t going to hurt himself or anyone else (other than you, emotionally, some more) and told his uninsured ass to take a hike?

I’ll give you one hint. Her name rhymes with pee-pee, and she’s been royally shit on.

So, here’s what you do in the event that you find yourself in love with a rock star. You have passionate, consummate, paradigm shifting sex with him while keeping separate residences, bank accounts, credit cards, cell phone plans, and even fucking Netflix accounts. If you can get away with giving him a fake name, all the better. Especially if he happens to be a bass player. Bass players and drummers all have ADHD. Every last one. It’s a scientific fact. And for that reason, they cannot be expected to keep a stable job, show up anywhere on time, remember to pay fucking bills or put gas in the tank, not overdraw their accounts, or resist free drugs or pussy. But
damn
can they keep a beat. The bumper stickers are true, Journal. Bass players
do
do it with rhythm.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’d had some incendiary, life-affirming (and at times, life-threatening) sex well before Bless His Heart ever came along. Knight had bent me into shapes that only the cartilage of a prepubescent (which I was) would allow, and Harley had a vibrating tongue ring. (Yes, they make those, and they are
glorious
.)

But Hans is the only man I’ve ever been with who I can say, beyond a whisper of doubt, truly
made love
to me. He took sex and wove into it something transcendent, arresting, and…well,
deep
. I mean, he was the only guy I’d ever met who not only got a hard-on watching
The Notebook
, but also insisted that we reenact the peel-our-wet-clothes-off-on-our-way-to-the-bedroom-after-the-rainy-canoe-ride scene.
No shit.

This guy exists, Journal, and he will ruin your credit and gene pool if you let him.

Dear Journal,

I think my husband
might have just made love to me. Hang on, let me mark my calendar. I don’t want to forget this shit. Every year from now on, December 20 is officially going to be BB and Ken’s Bonerversary. I’ll drop the kids at my parents’ house, prepare (pick up) a lovely meal, and then Ken and I will sit with our heads bowed in quiet remembrance of the one time he didn’t behave like a cold limp fish during sex. Our annual Bonerversary will keep me going. It will sustain me.

Ken was watching football in bed, per his usual, when I decided to break protocol and claw my way over Chastity Mountain—the person-sized hump that has formed in the middle of our mattress from a total lack of spooning, cuddling, and other fun middle-of-the-bed activities—to Ken’s side of the hill. He lifted his arm to let me in but made no other allowances. Ken was obviously humoring me, but I was having a moment, and he was going to get cuddled on whether he liked it or not.

Earlier that day, Sara (Dr. Snow to you) had just blown my mind by revealing that she’d just slept with a guy we used to work with, who just so happened to be waaaay married. I wasn’t freaking out because she’d fucked a married man. Whatever, she’s single, and in my opinion, where a married man puts his penis is his problem. I was freaking out because this particular dude was the last person on planet Earth I would have expected to cheat on his wife.

I wasn’t worried about Ken being unfaithful. Let’s be honest. He can’t handle the amount of sex and affection he has in his life as it is. He’s damn sure not going to go looking for
more
. If I were ever to catch Ken sneaking around behind my back, it would be so that he could spend more time
alone
, probably in a shabby motel room with the AC cranked up, the curtains drawn, and Sports Center on one glorious uninterrupted loop.

No, my unease with the situation had to do with my own behavior. It’d suddenly become very important to me that I reassure Ken that I would never,
ever
have sex with another man, regardless of the smut I was writing about in my journal. All I’d wanted was for this little writing project of mine to encourage Ken to step up his game, but it’d suddenly dawned on me that I could be pushing him away.

So, there I lay, with my head on Ken’s chest, blubbering about how much I loved him, while he stared over my head at the glowing screen behind me. The longer I spoke without so much as a squeeze in response, the more self-conscious I became. Eventually, I shut off my love tap and just surrendered to the fact that the Atlanta Falcons had won again—not the game, but the war.

Just as I was settling into a thick, comforting fog of resignation, Ken unexpectedly lifted his hips and pulled off his boxer briefs in one fluid motion. I had no idea what was going on. I always sleep naked, but Ken needs the clinging cotton chastity belt of his boxer briefs to feel secure.

The next thing I knew, I was being rolled onto my back, and Ken’s mouth was everywhere. His hard, naked body was pressed against the length of mine. His hands found my hands and clutched them tightly above my head. His legs sought entrance between my own, and his rock-hard erection rubbed aggressively against my suddenly wet cleft while he bathed my shoulders, neck, and jaw in kisses and love bites.

What the fuck?!?!

I hadn’t even touched him! Usually, it would take ten minutes of foreplay to get this guy hard, and then I’d be the one guiding
him
onto
his
back.

I was so stunned that I’d forgotten to kiss him back for a few seconds. I just lay there, trying to process what was happening.

Oh my God…Ken got his first emorection!

Once I finally shook off the initial shock, I wriggled my hands out of Ken’s grasp, grabbed his face, and pulled it to my mouth. His suddenly empty hands were then free to tug gently at my hair, skim my sides, and trace slow, torturous circles around my nipples as he continued to rub himself against my slick, swollen flesh. Just as I felt the firm tip of his cock poised at my opening, Ken lifted his head and gazed down at me with such warmth and such reverence that I almost didn’t recognize him. It was as if he’d been hijacked by a body snatcher.

Planting my feet firmly on the bed, I lifted my hips toward him and accepted Ken’s love. He couldn’t say it with words, the way I just had, but he made me feel it. For possibly the first time ever, my husband made love to me.

Unfortunately, the intensity completely overwhelmed him, and he came within a few minutes, but even that had been raw and passionate and just provided further proof that Ken really had been overcome…by an emotion. Like dripping water erodes even the hardest of stones, after ten years of poems and paintings and pillow talk and unrequited affection, I’d finally broken through.