The Big "O": A Romantic Comedy (6 page)

M
AX STARED around. He studiously avoided looking at Dr. Charles. She wore an exceedingly flattering camel color professional suit in a vintage fitted cut. The office was decorated in subtle beige, peach, sandstone, and other muted colors.

“Tell me about your concerns,” Dr. Charles said.

“I, uh, I don’t know where to start,” Max admitted.

“Why don’t you start at the beginning?” the therapist asked kindly.

Max sighed and wondered if therapy was going to be of any use at all.

Emily sat in the home office which she and Max shared. With her cell phone held against one ear by a shoulder, she fiddled with her computer.

“That could work” Emily said and thought for a moment, and then added, “He's a nice guy. Edwin is a really nice guy.”

In the hospital billing office, Isis pondered Emily’s seemingly casual statement which somehow, something about her friend’s tone, seemed laden with deeper meaning. Was Emily suggesting that her own husband was not a nice guy?

“Max is a nice guy,” Isis finally responded carefully. She wouldn’t—couldn’t—believe that Emily and Max were already having serious trouble. They’d only been married a few years.

“Uh, yeah, but Edwin is so… stable,” Emily replied. She doodled on a piece of paper, sketching ranMax ideas. What if she could come up with some kind of really cool marketing plan to refresh sales of their old book? She felt a surge of excitement at the idea. She’d been the creative genius at her first real job, where she’d worked and fallen for Max, after getting her MBA.

“Max seems pretty stable,” Isis said. Emily sighed.

“Uh-huh,” Emily finally said, as if she meant quite the opposite. Isis figured that she would sidestep the conversation that Emily seemed to want to have. She had five more minutes on her break and knew that she had better cut to the chase if she was going to get what she wanted.

“May Edwin and I come over for dinner? Just the two of us?” Isis blurted out. “You and Max and baby Max can just do your normal thing… and, uh, Edwin will be blindsided by your Maxestic bliss.” Then Isis paused for a long moment. She felt terribly awkward. She knew that Emily and Max were under a strain but when things were working, they were the adorable all-American couple and family that she dreamed of having for herself... with Edwin.

Isis almost spoke. Yet she knew that she needed to wait, and sit quietly, and let Emily respond, however she might. She had to really focus on keeping her mouth shut. It was a challenge.

“We may not be the best example of Maxestic bliss at this juncture,” Emily finally said.

Isis felt a moment of panic. No, not panic, desperation which rose in her body and being and threatened to overcome her. She absolutely had to get Emily to agree to her plan. It was essential.

She was sympathetic that Emily and Max were having a bit of difficult time; yet, how terribly could it actually be? It was more like they were mid-early marriage post-baby gold glow and facing the dirty-nappy, no time for themselves, or each other, but that was temporary. Wasn’t it? She hoped that it was just a brief marital and family interlude, which would, like many unpleasant life events, fade as or more rapidly than it had arrived.

“You have to, Emily, you're all I've got...” Isis said. She hated that she was whining and pleading but she felt like her happily ever after was on the line. She prayed that Emily would say,“Yes.”

Emily sighed. Isis was quiet and waited for her friend to speak.

“If you must,” Emily finally said. Isis giggled nervously and breathed a massive sigh of relief.

“Merci beaucoup,” Isis said rapidly, then looked at her watch, “I have to go now but listen, ma chérie, put the marketing stuff aside, while baby Max's is at his playgroup and take some time for you. Okay?”

“Okay. Au revoir,” Emily said.

“Au revoir, ma chérie. Merci beaucoup,” Isis said, her voice filled with gratitude and love, and hung up. Once off the phone, she said a tiny prayer that her plan would work.

Emily hung up and, suddenly overcome with fatigue, thinking about how little time she had before her toddler came home, slumped over her marketing plan draft. Maybe she would take a nap, in the 90 minutes or so she had left. She felt sick that she couldn’t motivate herself to exercise. All she wanted to do was sleep. She looked at her stomach and pinched it. She cried for five minutes and then gave herself a pep talk.

She wiped away her tears and decided that she'd feel sorry for herself later. She made a cup of green tea and decided to start her online marketing campaign right then.

'Up and at 'em' would become her new motto.

Over the next hour, Emily set up or updated social networking sites for their business.

Emily set up a Twitter, which she hadn't used before and updated their business FaceBook. She decided to upload better photos and took what he had that was most recent and decent and made certain that all of their sites had near identical branding.

She used a site to set up automatic posts for their primary social media sites and created files of aggregate content. She would check in often, updating through her smart phone, but wanted to be certain that her accounts had frequent new content.

She went into their eBook online dashboard. They'd kept the digital rights to their book, and had put their eBook "Ka-Ching!" on sale.

She looked at her watch and realized that she had fifteen minutes to get to little Max's school. She jumped up, grabbed her purse and keys, and ran to the car.

Juliette stood in front of a freshman introduction to psychology class. The students were quiet while they focused entirely on their exam. In her tortoiseshell glasses and lightweight pantsuit, with long brunette hair, she was an utterly sexy nerd. Her mobile phone, from within her pocket, vibrated. Startled, she jumped and pulled out her cellular phone.

The text read: Babe, come home early? Surprise for you.

Juliette grinned. She knew it.

Victor had been doing research: on how to begin to please her, how to deepen their physical and emotional love connection, and maybe even how to give her some full-bodied pleasure. Obviously, tonight he was going to practice. Thank goodness.

Vic, wearing a pair of dark shades, struggled to remain incognito, as he slowly perused the shelves of an ultra-modern sex shop. Without touching anything, he checked out outrageous new sex toys for women. He paused in front of a display of pink, girly vibrators.

After much indecision, between several different high-tech vibrating gadgets, Victor finally put a vibrator into the metal shopping basket on his arm. Already inside the shopping basket was a how-to please your woman video, a flavored lubricant, a Kama Sutra Love Kit (a beautifully decorated cardboard tube with a pamphlet of suggestions, including sexual positions, a little feather tickler, and edible honey-almond massage oil), massage oil, and an edible candy male G-string thong.

Victor looked more confident, almost happy, now that he had some sex pleasure toys and research materials. Maybe, just maybe, he thought, he could figure out how to please Juliette. His confidence lasted until he left the vibrator aisle, turned the corner, and saw something towering over him.

He looked up to see a gorgeous Amazon-like woman, a ginormous larger-than-life cardboard cut-out of Charlene Hanson, author of the “Multi-Orgasmic Married Woman, Oh Wow” on display in front of a beautifully draped table which was color-branded to match her book's cover design. Vic’s entire demeanor changed and he appeared to shrink.

For a moment he considered picking up one of Charlene Hanson’s books. Was it possible that this chick's tome could help his marriage? He deliberated. Maybe the book wasn't self-help bullshit and a complete utter waste of time. He looked at all of the sex toys and stuff that he had in his shopping basket and then looked back at the book.

The toys looked fun; he was getting a little excited just thinking about Juliette eating the G-string thong off of his body. The book looked boring. Maybe the Kama-fucking-Sutra was alright, he decided, that shit had fucking awesome pictures.

Nah, he didn't need that stupid book. He turned his back on the book display and, feeling very proud of his commitment to meet Juliette's sexual needs, and improve his marriage, he went to the register to pay for the items in his shopping basket.

Max faced his son. Baby Max, a mostly bald, yet adorable, Buddha-like toddler, sat in his highchair. Max fed him applesauce while Emily rinsed some cooked noodles at the sink.

“'So my question for you, Max, is when are you going to do what you need to do to get on top of that bitch?'” Max said mimicking Kathryn in a high-pitched snarky tone of voice.

“Did you tell her we've been busy?” Emily asked.

Max grunted and spooned more applesauce into his kid. Emily took a pot of pasta sauce off of the stove and put it into a vintage thick blue pottery bowl. Max carefully spooned applesauce into the mouth of his happy child.

“What else did she have to say?” Emily asked.

“That we've had some success… and have a following… but a negative trend is a risk, so we better work our platform or we'll be back to self-publishing with our next book,” Max said. His voice exuded his obvious irritation.

“So conceive of a way to parlay our fading 15 minutes into a half hour… or else?” Emily asked.

“Yeah. She's weirded out that we had more momentum as self-publishers, percentage-wise. It’s like we sold more books that way than we're selling with them,” Max added.

Emily brought the pasta and bowl of sauce and a green salad to the table.

“I'll think of something. I'm working on getting twitter-fied,” Emily said.

“So back to the issue at hand. What kind of woman brags publicly?” Max asked.

Emily grinned and shrugged before she sat at the table and filled their plates.

“And I think it's safe to say a book about being multi-orgasmic is a public brag. Right? She's probably some ugly skank who conceived of this… this… shameless public crowing to exploit people and sell books,” Max said meanly.

“Men do it all the time,” Emily said and laughed.

“Exploit people to sell books?” Max asked.

“No, silly. Brag about their sexual prowess. And you know very well that she isn't an ugly skank. She is quite beautiful. She looks really happy, too,” Emily added.

“Yeah, well guys brag in the privacy and decency of the locker room,” Max replied.

Emily smiled and shook her head. Then she got up and took Max his plate full of food. He spooned the last bit of apple sauce into his child’s mouth. Baby Max swallowed and then fingered some green peas on his high chair tray. Max looked down at his plate.

“That looks good,” Max said to his wife.

Emily didn’t reply. Instead she rubbed his neck and he finally relaxed. Then she leaned down and kissed his ear. Baby Max cooed happily.

Emily sat in a rocking chair in her son’s room. Baby Max toddled toward her with "The Art Book for Children,” an illustrated kid's art book with art works by famous artists. Emily picked him up. Max entered the room and leaned against the wall and watched his wife and child.

“What do you want to look at first?” Emily asked her son.

“Sunflower,” said the child.

“Van Gogh it is, little man,” his mother replied.

“Van Go,” baby Max said.

“Van Gogh,” Emily said and corrected his pronunciation.

“Van Goggh,” her son repeated happily.

“Yes, very good. Van Gogh,” his mother replied and hugged her child tight.

Max rolled his eyes to observe Emily still encouraging their child to stretch his mind beyond normal limits.

“You don't have to teach him that, Emily,” Max said uqietly to his wife.

“I want to,” Emily said firmly.

“Whatever,” Max said, feeling cowed.

Irritated, Max told her he'd be back to read the last story and put the little guy down. Then he left the room.

Emily read to her child as he grew sleeper and she was excited to notice that her cell phone chirped as she got new followers, likes and retweets, and more, on various social networks.

After she changed her little guy and then handed him off to his father, Emily relaxed on the master bedroom chaise and tweeted, "A financial mess is like a dirty diaper: no one wants to clean it up but the longer you let it go, the more it stinks". To her surprise, within a day or two, the tweet was picked up by the finance division of a well-known international content site.

Inside of Victor and Juliette’s bedroom, Victor watched as Juliette annotated and read an article.

“I don't see why you won't try it,” Victor said sullenly.

Juliette looked up and smiled. He was adorable really, although his interrupting her and, at this juncture in her work, it was a bit tiresome.

“I've tried them. They work just fine. I'm just not a fan. Plus, the issue isn't whether I can give myself an orgasm with a sex toy or otherwise, it's whether you can give me an orgasm,” Juliette said.

Victor frowned. She was being totally logical and her statement was, as far as he knew, entirely accurate, but damn. That's just cold, he thought to himself. But the burst of shame that he felt made him decide that he deserved it. He hoped that the truth would set them free. The truth and some new mad bedroom skills, if he could just figure out how to get them.

Juliette resumed reading. Vic turned on his side, turning his back on Juliette. He knew that he was being childish but he couldn't seem to help himself. She shrugged.

Max watched Jim Cramer's "Mad Money" on CNBC and fed the baby his breakfast. Not focused on what he was doing, Max got cereal in baby Max's hair.

Baby Max didn't mind, he happily watched TV and held his little Yoda.

Max gazed raptly at the TV screen.

“Diversify, diversify, diversify. This is no time to put all your eggs in one basket,” said Jim Cramer authoritatively. Max nodded and realized that he was smearing breakfast cereal all over his son’s face. The toddler looked up at his father and gurgled happily.