44 Chapters About 4 Men (2 page)

Emorection
(noun)—a penis that has become erect due to an emotional rather than a physical or visual stimulus.

Fanfuckingtastic
(adj.)—the way the words
fucking fantastic
sound when uttered by someone who’s had an over-poured glass of pinot grigio.

Favoritest
(adj.)—a dumb way to say most favorite.

Floaty
(adj.)—1. buoyant, elevated, airy. 2. carefree, content, relaxed.

Frankenbook
(noun)—a random pile of journal entries, emails, photos, dirty poems, and pornographic short stories that some asshole threw together and tried to pass off as a book.

Frenemies
(noun)—Friends? Enemies? Depends on the day and the amount of liquor involved.

Gargamelian
(adj.)—of or pertaining to Gargamel, villain and nemesis of the Smurfs.

Husboner
(noun)—a married man who
should
be sick and tired of his wife’s stretched out, floppy old vagina but instead behaves like an insatiable sex machine who just snorted an eight ball of coke.

Husbot
(noun)—a married man who behaves more like a robot than a human being. This cyborg is typically obedient, task-oriented, introverted, rigid in his adherence to rules and routines, sexually inhibited, and averse to fun.

Judgy
(adj.)—1. tending to make moral judgments based on one’s own personal beliefs and experiences. 2. most females native to the southeastern United States.

Ladyfriend
(noun)—a female friend whom you do not wish to refer to as your girlfriend because you are culturally sensitive enough to know that African American women hate it when Caucasian women call them
girlfriend
.

Lickable/Flickable
(adj.)—self-explanatory.

Manfriend
(noun)—a male lover who is both of adult age and considerably older than his beau, causing the term
boyfriend
to seem silly and inappropriate, much like the relationship itself.

Menius
(noun)—1. a monster-genius hybrid. 2. a mean genius. 3. Insert picture of Dr. Sara Snow here.

Sausagefest
(noun)—a social gathering consisting primarily of people with penises.

Shivved
(verb)—to stab or be stabbed with a makeshift blade, referred to in prison as a shiv.

Skeezy
(adj.)—a sleazy person with less than honorable intentions.

Snarf
(verb and proper noun)—1. to swallow or gobble up ravenously and with zero respect for table manners. 2. the name of Lion-O’s slightly annoying catlike pet on
ThunderCats
.

Stabby
(adj.)—1. full of sharp points or stabbing sensations. 2. a word coined by and stolen from comedic goddess Jenny Lawson.

Stalkery
(adj.)—of or pertaining to someone who regularly harasses, follows, monitors, and attempts to contact another person—especially a former lover or celebrity—in an aggressive, threatening manner.

Tuberculosed
(adj.)—the state of being afflicted with tuberculosis.
Duh.

Underworldly
(adj.)—of or pertaining to hell.

Unshitty
(adj.)—not shitty; not necessarily nice but not shitty either.

Vagrantism
(noun)—1. the state or condition of being a vagrant. 2. one who wanders about idly without a permanent home or employment yet manages to afford leather pants and partially completed tattoos.

Vandalous
(adj.)—of or pertaining to vandalism; basically, just a way better, sexier version of the word
vandalic
.

Vulneraboner
(noun)—see
Emorection
.

Dear Journal,

This motherfucker is killing me.

Fresh out of the shower. He’s so close I can smell the Irish Spring on his skin. His hair’s all damp and sexy, and his beard scruff is at that perfect length—just long enough to be soft to the touch, but not so long that it hides his perfect chiseled features. And the way his undershirt clings to biceps and stretches across the hard planes of his chest…I could stare at him all night. Actually, I have been—through the corner of my eye. But that’s not enough.

I want to touch him.

In the half hour since he plopped down next to me and flipped on the Braves game I’ve thought of at least a thousand and one ways to reach over and caress this man. I could lace my fingers through his, or run my knuckles along his rough, square jaw. Maybe I could be playful and walk my mint-green nails up his sculpted ab muscles, then, once I have his attention, I could thrust those same fingertips into his wet hair and straddle his damp, clean, hard body.

But I don’t do shit, because I know all it will get me is a sideways glance and a shift in the opposite direction.

My husband is a rock. Not as in,
He’s so strong and supportive. I don’t know what I’d do without him.
But more like,
He’s so fucking cold I wonder if he still has a pulse.
Ken has never even held my hand, Journal. Not on purpose, anyway. He has had his hand held by me, while unconscious, but whenever I try that move during waking hours, Ken will politely endure the discomfort of human contact for…oh, say, five and a half seconds before smoothly removing his soft, limp flesh from my grasp.

Sex is pretty much the same story. Ever the gentleman, Ken will lie on his back and allow me to have my way with him while he quietly engages in minimal and obligatory petting. (Even when I try to be fun and reenact the ice cream scene from
Fifty Shades Darker.
In his defense, I do
have to play the part of Christian because Ken
obviously
doesn’t know his lines. And I admit, the white noise of a baby monitor isn’t exactly Al Green. And for some reason we never seem to have vanilla ice cream, like in the book. We only have Cherry Garcia, which is pretty awkward to lick off, what with all the chewing required. But still. A
little
participation would be appreciated.)

Regardless of the level of theatrics involved, afterward I always kiss and cuddle Ken’s lean, beautiful, unresponsive body, trying to squeeze a single degree of warmth from the man-shaped boulder that is my husband. All the while, I can almost hear him counting to himself—
one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand
—before he taps me on the ass. My cue to get the fuck off of him.

At least, that’s what it
feels
like. The problem with Ken isn’t so much his coldness—his lack of need, want, or capacity for intimacy—or his inability to feel, let alone discuss, emotions. Those attributes actually keep our marriage quite stable and drama-free. That, and the fact that the man never does
anything
wrong.

Kenneth Easton is a lawn-mowing, bill-paying, law-abiding, defensive-driving, trash-toting
husbot
—a cyborg built specifically to withstand seventy to eighty years of gale-force matrimony. I’ve
never
caught him looking at another woman. Hell, I’ve never even caught him in a lie.

No, the problem with Ken is that he’s married to
me
.

Before meeting Ken, I’d been contorted into at least seventy-three percent of the positions in the Kama Sutra, Journal. I’d shaved most of my head and had all my lady bits pierced before I was old enough to see an R-rated movie. I spent my free time being handcuffed to things by boys with more combined tattoos than a Guns N’ Roses reunion concert in the Florida Panhandle. Ken simply can’t compete.

So, why, you might be wondering, did a slutty little punk like me go and marry someone so straight-laced and frigid?

It was because of
them
. Because of the way my adrenaline spikes and my pupils dilate in a fight-or-flight-or-fuck response every time I smell the sickly sweet musk of Calvin Klein’s Obsession for Men. Because of the way a pierced bottom lip makes me want to take up smoking again. Because of the way a full sleeve of tattoos makes me want to hitch a ride on a tour bus and leave everything I worked so hard to achieve in a gutter at the side of the road. Because my nerves were fucking shot by the time I met Ken, my heart was riding in on fumes, and the stability and security and sanity he offered was a soothing balm to my spent scorched soul.

Those inked-up men-children from my past might have been ferocious lovers, but they couldn’t keep their dicks in their pants, their asses out of jail, or a positive balance in their bank accounts to save their lives. Ken, on the other hand, was just so…safe, responsible, easy. He wore Nikes and GAP T-shirts. He owned his own home. He
jogged
. His criminal record was as ink-free as his freckled skin. And, to top it all off, he had a degree in…wait for it…
accounting
.

Needless to say, I might have overcorrected a bit.

Don’t get me wrong. Ken is my best friend, and we are actually ridiculously happy together—or, at least, I’m happy. I am. Really. You can be bored to tears and happy at the same time, right? They call those happy tears. Happy, bored, oh-so bored, sometimes-fantasize-about-hitting-your-spouse-out-of-frustration happy tears. Ken is pretty anhedonic and deadpan, so it’s hard to tell how he’s feeling. I choose to think of him as happy, too. But let’s be honest. Ken doesn’t really have feelings.

What he does have is a Captain America–style square jaw with a subtle cleft and a permanent five o’clock shadow. He also has enviously high cheekbones. His aqua-blue eyes are hooded by long espresso-colored lashes, and his sandy-brown hair is just long enough on top to allow for a good grip. His physique is lean yet muscular. His sense of humor is dry. He is brilliant and self-deprecating, and he has the ability to skip rocks across any body of water (a secret turn-on of mine).

The man is at least ninety percent perfect for me, but lately, all I can think about is the less-than-or-equal-to ten percent that’s missing—passion and body art. Two things I need to mourn and move on from in order to protect this lovely yet depressingly monotonous thing I have going with Ken.

But I can’t.

Tattooed bad boys are like a drug I can’t quit. I devour antihero romance novels like they’re an essential food group. My phone and iPod runneth over with the songs of a thousand breathy, angsty, tattooed alt-rockers, ready to fill my head at the press of a button whenever I need to escape. My DVR is brimming with mysterious vampires, renegade bikers, hedonistic rock stars, and zombie apocalypse survivors—alpha males into whose swollen, ink-covered arms I can run whenever things around here get a little too…domestic.

And do you know what I realized in my escapades to these imaginary dystopian societies and fictional underground fight rings? I realized that I
know
these men. I dated these men—the super intense skinhead turned US Marine turned motorcycle club outlaw, the ex-convict/underground hot-rod racer with the devil-may-care attitude, the sensitive guy liner–sporting heavy metal bassist…

I had them
all
, Journal. How did I not see the parallels between my fantasy men and my ex-boyfriends before? And I call myself a psychologist!

Take Knight for example…

When I was fifteen, a pale skinhead

Handcuffed me to my ex-boyfriend’s bed.
He doused me with honey—

The noises were funny—
And then ripped my poor hymen to shreds.

Sorry, Journal. I just felt like the only way to soften the blow of that information was to deliver it within the inherent whimsy of a limerick. That poem pretty much exemplifies the confusion, oppression, and ultimate pain (both physical and emotional) that was my first serious relationship.

Looking back on it, the time I spent being Knight’s girlfriend was not unlike being a kidnapping victim with Stockholm syndrome. At the time, my innocent fifteen-year-old brain didn’t know what the hell was going on, only that I had somehow become his, and resistance was futile.

Knight was a skinhead. Correction: Knight was
the
skinhead—the only one in our sprawling suburban Atlanta tri-county area, to be exact. It was comical. He was so incredibly angry that none of the other angry-white-male subculture groups at Peach State High School would do. The jocks were a little too gregarious. The punks, although sufficiently violent and vandalous, had a bit too much fun. The goth kids were just pussies. No, Knight’s rage was so consuming that he had to choose the one subgroup whose image screamed,
I will fucking curb-stomp you and then rip off your arm and beat you with it if you so much as breathe the same air as me
. Knight was so successful in his mission to intimidate that he remained a subgroup of one throughout high school.