Read 44 Chapters About 4 Men Online

Authors: BB Easton

Tags: #Memoir

44 Chapters About 4 Men (7 page)

BOOK: 44 Chapters About 4 Men
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The Notorious K.E.N.
August 30

Dear Journal,

After consulting with the devil on my shoulder
1
, I’ve decided to embark on a morally bankrupt psychological experiment with the hopes of transforming Ken into someone warm and affectionate whose love for me is so immense that he
needs
a tattoo of my name and/or likeness just so that he can better broadcast his feelings for me to the world. So, pack your bags and bring a flashlight, Journal, because from now on, you’ll be hiding in a dark hole in the back of my hard drive under the title Baby Shower Diaper Cake Instructions.

Don’t take it personally, Little Guy. It’s for your own good. I need a place to takes notes on Ken’s progress without him catching wind of what I’m up to, and no man less gay than Carson Kressley will ever come snooping around a file called Baby Shower Diaper Cake Instructions, located inside a folder called Baby Shower Ideas, which is nestled inside another folder entitled…wait for it…Cute Stuff I Found on Pinterest.

Oh, and don’t get jealous, but in your old spot, I’m going to start planting a glossily exaggerated Lifetime movie version of you under the filename Super Private Journal That Ken Is Never, Never Allowed to Read Ever where I will plant completely fabricated stories about my ex-boyfriends designed to inspire Ken to up his fucking game. And no, that filename isn’t too obvious. Blatant reverse psychology is the only way to get shit done when you’re dealing with a man—or a toddler.

Don’t you read my journal, Ken. Don’t you do it. Oh…you’d better not.

It’ll work. Trust me.

Aw, look at you, Journal. You’re starting to feel bad for Ken, aren’t you? That’s adorable, but I promise, your sympathy is completely wasted on him. The man does not have feelings. I’m not entirely convinced that he even has nerve endings.

Did you know that he once fell asleep while I waxed his back? Literally, the man dozed off while I smeared searing hot wax over several square feet of his bare skin and simultaneously ripped out thousands of hairs by the root. So, don’t you worry about Ken, Little Guy. He’s a soulless gangsta, and he’ll be fine.

1
Dr. Sara Snow is my bottom bitch. Up until three years ago she was a school psychologist, like me, and we were actively trying to get fired from the same school system. Then she had to go and get all Sheryl Sandberg on me and move two thousand miles away to become a distinguished psychology professor at some fancy research university. She’s so smart she could probably cure cancer if she wasn’t also crazy with a capital K and backward Z.

Call Me Crazy
August 31

Dear Journal,

I can feel you judging me. You don’t have to say it. You have disapproval written all over you, like a Meat Is Murder sticker on a MacBook Air. Look at you, all smug in your ivory fucking tower.

You don’t know what it’s like out here in the trenches, trying to make a marriage work day in and day out. Fifty percent of these things fail, you know. Perhaps, if I gave you a little more background, a little perspective, you’d see that I’m not a monster. I’m just a frustrated wife trying to maximize the potential of her very beautiful, very cold husband. Then, maybe you could cool it with the silent treatment.

For starters, did you know that Ken has someone else’s initials carved into his arm? Yep, that’s right. When he was sixteen, some girl who banged him, like, twice decided to stop banging him, and he fucking carved her initials into his arm.

Now, when I was sixteen, I already had both nipples and my clit pierced, so I’m no stranger to self-mutilation, but still.

When this bastard dies, after spending, like, a thousand years being my life partner, his body is going to go into the ground with someone else’s initials on it! I just want some representation on there, too, goddamn it! Preferably somewhere both visible and brazenly unprofessional.

So, you see, Journal, it’s not just that I’m some self-centered only child who wants my husband to tattoo my name on his body. It’s that I want my name on his body bigger and bolder than
her
name. It’s a totally different thing.

I’m pretty sure you’re already well acquainted with Ken’s low libido and comatose performance in the bedroom by now, based on my first few entries, so we’ll move on to the third behavior I hope to target with this little experiment, which is getting Ken to compliment me. I realize that also sounds rather petty and shallow, but if you only knew, Journal. This motherfucker
1
has
never
complimented me without coercion—ever.

I’m sure you’re wondering, how is that possible? Surely, that’s an exaggeration.

Oh, it’s not. Ken is the most stubborn human being on planet Earth, and ever since the first time I pouted about his refusal to compliment me way back when we were dating, it has turned into a power struggle of epic proportions. Every four to six months (and usually about three to five days before my period is due), I bring it to his attention, and every four to six months he just rolls his eyes at me as if I’m being some needy succubus.

Take his annual company Christmas party for example. Every year, when I emerge from the bathroom after spending two hours primping for this black-tie bullshit that he knows I get anxious about, do you know what he says when he looks up from the couch?

You guessed it. Nothing.

Do you know what his face says?
Oh God, you’re going to expect me to compliment you now, aren’t you? Well, fuck that noise. I’m just gonna go back to watching this riveting bayou thrift store gold mine show now and pretend like you’re not there.

Shit. Why are you still there? I’m not even looking at you. Oh no, don’t put your hands on your hips!

Fuck! Now, you’re pissed. If I club myself unconscious with this remote, can we just skip this conversation and go straight to the hospital? I don’t even care that we’ll miss the silent auction. Like I need another iPod. Am I right?

About two and a half minutes into this ridiculous stalemate, the crickets are so loud that it’s like
they’re
trying to compliment me just to cut the tension.

Inevitably, I let out a huff and hiss through my teeth, “I’m going to go back into the bathroom, and we’re going to try this again. Only this time, when I come out here, you
are
going to say, ‘You look nice,’ and I’m
not
going to stab your dick with my stiletto.”

Listen, Journal, I’m a psychologist, not a mind reader. If Ken doesn’t tell me I’m pretty or that I’m a good mom or that I cook a mean bowl of cereal, how can I assume that he’s thinking it? I can’t. Ergo, I walk around every day under the assumption that my husband thinks I’m a homely asshole. I’m a homely asshole, and I smell like one, too. So whenever one of the extras in the movie of my life happens to throw an errant compliment my way, I respond like a drowning drunken coed who’s just been tossed a human floatation device. I cry and flail and smother that bitch.

The first time I leaped into the arms of a scary, probably contagious, possibly parole-violating young man on the street downtown, it was because he hit on me while I was seven months pregnant and feeling especially fat and undesirable. As I passed him on the sidewalk Gang-Affiliated gave me a blatant, unashamed once-over with his bulging bloodshot eyes, cocked an eyebrow and asked appreciatively, “How you doin’?”

Despite my massive midsection, I pounced on that man like a cheetah trying to take down a gazelle. I’m pretty sure no one’s ever made a card-carrying Crip feel more embarrassed and uncomfortable than I did that afternoon.

At my next OB/GYN appointment, I half-expected the doctor to tell me that the baby was fine, but I’d need some antibiotics to clear up the syphilis I’d contracted during that hug.

Then, a few months ago, I was at the grocery store, feeling unsexier still, as I used my grotesque post-childbirth body to shove my three-year-old son and infant daughter around in one of those obnoxious shopping carts with the plastic race car bolted to the front that’s as long as a city block and impossible to maneuver without clearing all the endcap displays when yet another mauling occurred.

In an attempt to avoid being seen by any real humans, I heaved the five-hundred-pound yellow-and-red monstrosity through the self-checkout lane, flinging nursing pads and nipple cream across the scanner and in the general direction of the plastic bag carousel as quickly as my fluid-filled fingers could handle. Snatching my receipt from the printer, I dug in my heels and started thrusting that behemoth toward the exit, my sights set on the dented eight-year-old Ford Mustang parked conveniently next to the cart return.

In the midst of my attempt to escape unseen, a male employee, who was easily ten years younger than me and probably had braces, stopped me dead in my tracks by asking with all sincerity, “Did you get your discount?”

Both annoyed that my getaway had been foiled and confused by his remark, I furrowed my brow and glared at the poor little shit, waiting for him to continue.

Dropping his professional act, the kid beamed, “We’re giving fifty percent off to all the beautiful ladies today!”

Tears pricked my eyes. As if I hadn’t knocked over enough in that store already, I leaped onto that twenty-year-old hard enough to send us both careening into a gigantic tower of water cooler jugs.

Thank God they held fast or else Ken would have had to watch them pulling my lifeless body out of the blue plastic rubble on the evening news above a caption reading,
This just in
.
Devoted mother of two and
Kroger employee killed today in water cooler avalanche. Cause determined to be husband’s selfish withholding of compliments.

Oh, and don’t let me forget the time that I practically dry-humped a probably homeless, possibly tuberculosed old man at the subway station.

Although he’d only asked me for a cigarette, which was an hourly occurrence at the inner city college I attended, this particular bum had prefaced his question with, “Yo, Slim.”

I realize that doesn’t sound overtly flattering, but I was thoroughly anorexic at the time, so any reference to my being malnourished was music to my starving soul.

I threw my emaciated body at him so hard that he just about coughed up his last good lung after the attack. People could have
died
, Journal, all because of Ken’s refusal to say nice things to me.

That brings me to my fourth and final marital goal—getting Ken to bestow upon me an adorable, personalized nickname. My husband has never referred to me by any name other than my full, legal name. Now that I think about it, he doesn’t actually call me anything or even fucking clear his throat to get my attention before speaking to me in audible tones like a normal human. No, Ken prefers to just wait until I am running both the blender and a garbage disposal full of forks simultaneously, then he speaks
near
me in hushed monotones that are only
technically within the human register.

Hey! You know what? Ken did call me Crazy once. Does that count as a pet name?

It was the middle of the night, and I’d accidentally woken him up while cursing and banging around in our master bathroom during a full-blown OCD flare-up
2
.

Ken stumbled into the bathroom, squinting into what must have felt like a supernova of light, to find me standing one-legged on the counter, dangling from a scalding hot metal wall sconce by my fingertips, while I swung a broom handle in the general direction of every shadow on the ceiling that vaguely resembled a cobweb.

I should have been embarrassed by my late-night manic cleaning frenzy, but all I remember feeling was a fuzzy, girlish giddiness when Ken sleepily raised one corner of his perfect mouth into an amused little smirk and asked, “Whatcha doing, Crazy?”

It was the closest I ever came to getting a pet name out of Ken, but since he wasn’t fully conscious when he’d said it, I don’t think I’m actually allowed to accept it. It would be like nickname rape or something. No, Crazy isn’t going to work.

I want a proper pet name—something personalized, something that refers to my most endearing qualities, like Freckles or Pink Taco or maybe even Taco Bell Grande.

BOOK: 44 Chapters About 4 Men
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