Wrecked (24 page)

I stuck the little piece of paper with the list of how the movies were stacked deep in my wallet, left, and came back
the next day. I was anxious, like a hunter who has set a trap. Except my odds of success were far better than a hunter’s—my trap was guaranteed to be closed around its prey, my husband.

He wasn’t home when I got there. Home sweet home. I dropped my bag in the front hall and ran with my jacket still on to the corner of the living room where the stack of DVDs was—to have my suspicions tragically confirmed. You can’t trust anyone. You can never put your life—or your heart or anything else, including your pussy—in the hands of others.

I could see immediately that they were stacked in a different order. I pulled out the scrap of paper with the list on it and checked: they were indeed out of order. Completely. Nothing was the same—not in the stack of DVDs and not in our relationship. Without even realizing it was so wrong, he had haphazardly restacked the videos. How stupid does he think I am? Breathing quickly, I opened the cases and held them up to the light. If a hair had been there I would have seen it. Every one was gone, in the first case, the second, the third, the fourth, until the last—even in the one we had already watched the hair was missing.

It shocked me more than I had expected. I sat there on the floor and thought. I knew he was a sex maniac, but this bad? I didn’t know it was so extreme. He watched six porn films while I was gone? In one night? Or during the day. Crazy. I had fallen for him because of his unrestrained masculine sexuality. To piss off my mother I’d fallen for the most Neanderthal-like, sex-obsessed man I could find. And he had fallen for me to piss off his mother—me, an anti-Christian, the opposite of Catholic, so un-Catholic that I practically took things full circle and became Catholic again. We were together because we wanted
to upset our mothers. And it worked well. But what now? This much sexuality was too much even for me.

I had to calm myself down and think about how to bring it up with him in a way that would cause as much permanent damage to our relationship as possible. And I would give him one more chance to come clean, just to prove to myself that things truly weren’t going to work out with him.

In my delusional state—there I was, shooting myself in the foot and trying to rob myself of the love of my life—I felt deceived, betrayed, and all alone. Even so, I offered a friendly greeting, perhaps exaggeratedly so. We’re still together. I need him to feel secure for the moment.

“So? Did you manage to wait for me to watch the films?”

“Of course. What did you think? I promised. And I kept my word.”

Sure.

“You didn’t have a quick look at one or two out of boredom?”

“No, really. I just told you. Why are you being so weird about it?”

He senses that something’s lurking. He’s panicking. But he has no idea how I could know it. Did he have the sound up too high? Did I have a spy out in the hall? Did I have him tailed? Is there spyware you can install in a TV? That’s the kind of thing my mother always did to her men. It occurs to me that I must have inherited my distrust of men from her. Shit. Yep. Her old video recorder had a special function. She could go to bed and while she was sleeping, the VCR would record the channels her boyfriend watched and for how long as he zapped between the channels that showed naked women at night. But what is a man supposed to do, when his girlfriend is so screwed up? And
yet I followed her in acting like a hard-ass prosecutor when it came to male sexuality.

“I’m asking because the stack looks as though it’s been changed around from the way it was when I left yesterday, unless I’m misremembering things.”

I give him ample opportunity to tell the truth. I keep asking him, giving him chance after chance to come clean, until I’m not able to control myself anymore and am about to throw a fit because of all the cowardice and lying. Though in secret I know up to that point in our relationship I’d never presented myself as the type of person to whom he could comfortably tell the truth. When you constantly throw fits and castigate the most loved person in your life, then you have nobody to blame but yourself if you get lied to out of fear. I spread fear and terror in our relationship while at the same time condemning my husband, who has gotten caught trying to avoid all that.

“Ah, that’s what you mean. I was vacuuming up and knocked over the stack of DVDs. The things you notice! My sweetie. And then you automatically think the worst of me—that I would watch the movies without you. Don’t worry. When I say something, I stick to it. You can trust me. Don’t look so angry.”

That would have done it if I didn’t know, 100 percent, that he was lying—if I didn’t have other evidence to rely on. It’s really scary when you know someone is lying but he does it so well that you would believe it if you didn’t know otherwise. That’s how you get tricked.

I stare at him with squinted eyes.

“What is up with you? Is there something wrong? Don’t you believe me?”

“That’s it exactly! I don’t believe you! You disgusting pig. What if I told you that I know for a fact that you watched
all
of the movies, maybe not all the way through, but you watched them all right.
All of them!
Every single one. I set a trap for you. You disgusting pig. How can I trust you? I can’t live with someone like that. Someone who doesn’t keep his word and then when he’s caught just keeps lying to my face! How is that supposed to work? I know you watched the movies, you disgusting pig.”

“What are you talking about? You set a trap? What? A trap?”

I run out of the room. He comes after me. When people are newly together, they play those games. Always imitating things they see in the movies whenever something extreme happens. Where else would you learn to act like that?

You don’t actually want to leave. You just want to test the person to see if he runs after you. Then you can stop running.

We fought for days over all the lies. In couples therapy it became clear very quickly that I was the asshole in that situation. I set a trap, and that was worse than his lying.

My distrust about all things sexual is deep. Maybe that’s why things work so well in bed? Maybe it has nothing to do with his virility or his money. Maybe it has to do with his sexual energy, which I find so hard to control—though I actually benefit the most from that energy. Because he manages to make me come every single time we have sex. Or is that just because of me? That’s what he says. He says it has nothing to do with him but rather with my ability to let myself go completely—at least when it comes to sex. In his mind that’s why I come so hard and so consistently.

It’s great how long I’ve been able to sit here and breathe and think. I listen to things in the apartment. I’m slowly getting
hungry and want to get going. There’s still clanging coming from the washroom. I won’t interrupt him. I’m happy for it to get done. It’s amazing the way our relationship has changed in the last seven years. The way we—or really, I—have changed. He hasn’t needed to change nearly as much as I have. He doesn’t bother anyone the way I do. He’s much more at peace with himself.

Earlier I clung to him like some kind of lunatic. Then I decided I couldn’t be so dependent, because I was worried things would fall apart. I gradually got stronger and now I think I could live without him. Suddenly things are at the other extreme now. I wish he would cheat on me so I could cheat, too. Maybe he could cheat with the pretty babysitter or some friend of mine. Perhaps I shouldn’t try to pick out the woman for him to have an affair with. That’s what Frau Drescher would say, I’m sure. I’m not sure how I should confess to my husband that I want to sleep with every man I meet. I love him and I love having sex with him. But I want more. Nobody could do better sexually than he does—his handiwork with my vagina, that porn-film diddle-diddle he does to my clit that makes it almost explode. I just want to have another body between my thighs. Monogamy can be such a prison sometimes!

I hear him unfold the drying rack in the washroom. That thing is unwieldy. Does he really have so much laundry to hang that he needs to put that thing out, too? Interesting.

How can I explain to him that all the men I’ve had crushes on for a few days or weeks in the last year are obviously not a threat to our great love? Or is that playing with fire? And much more dangerous than it seems to me? I think that if I could sleep with them, my infatuation would quickly dissipate, would be manageable, and the magic would soon wear off.

He finally comes upstairs and smiles at me. “Ready to go?”

“Sure. Just let me go grab a sweater.”

I wipe away my thoughts. I’m going to have to address them again soon, though.

We lock our apartment with several locks. Safety first. We walk to our regular Italian restaurant, called Alberto. Everything we do is well rehearsed. Food, sex, the routes we take, everything. I need to be pacified, not agitated.

Georg and I take the same route to the restaurant as always, crossing the streets at the same places. We don’t talk much. Those days are long gone. Sometimes I hold his hand, but then I let go because it seems ridiculous to hold his hand. Sometimes I think we’re too old to be holding hands.

When it comes to relationships, my therapist says that every single day you are together has to be voluntary. But for years, unfortunately, I’ve brought coercion into our relationship. I now realize that I fell in love with my own image of my husband. Then through a painful process I had to admit that he wasn’t actually the way I saw him. And he had to go through the same process. And we have stayed together anyway because I still like what’s left even now that all the illusions have been dispelled. It was someone else, but someone good for me—and good to me. Then I began to want to change him so he’d be more like me. My therapist has told me a hundred times, “Frau Kiehl, what do you want? If you ever managed to mold him so he was like you, you would despise him immediately and that would be it for your relationship.” I had to learn—again, through a painful process in therapy—that I need to leave him as he is.

A few times along the way we say hello to someone we know. We know a lot of people here in the neighborhood. It’s
important to us to get along with most of our neighbors—for the children. That way when they run around in the area, everyone knows to keep an eye on them. Like in a herd of animals, everyone needs to help protect all the kids. We look into our regular café next to the church and wave to the barista, who’s a friend of ours. Then we continue on in silence. The way it should be between people who have been married for a long time. Everything in our relationship is starting to fall asleep. Why should we be any different from any other couple? He says more and more often that I’ve become deaf to the frequency of his voice. He speaks to me and I don’t react. It’s not intentional, I just don’t hear it. My brain has determined that anything anyone else says is more interesting; plus my brain knows I can always ask later if I miss something he says. The same is true of him. I often catch him not listening to me. The insatiable curiosity about what incredible things the other partner might have to say is completely gone, and has been for years. The air’s gone out. It scares me. Help, I want out! I would love to rescue our love or, at the very least, save myself from this life.

At Alberto we go to our regular table. Luckily it’s free. We have another table we use when our regular one is already taken.

We sit next to each other in the window and watch people walking past. We don’t talk much. We’ve already told each other all the stories of our lives. As always, I order spaghetti with shredded mixed vegetables and lots of chili pepper. I’ve recently discovered a new god for my monotheism: Jonathan Safran Foer. I love him and his book
Eating Animals
. It plays a huge role at every mealtime. My husband sometimes gets jealous of authors. Up until now he’s had no other reason to get jealous. I read nonfiction books. And I become a fanatical
follower of the writer of whatever I’m reading. I wanted to become a vegetarian, which is why I read Foer’s
Eating Animals
. Maybe my husband is right to be jealous when all I talk about for weeks and months is Jonathan Safran Foer. He is my God and his book my bible. Monotheism, like I said. My husband wants to be my only god. He says, smiling at me, “You shouldn’t have any other gods but me.” But when I can concentrate on doing something good, like becoming a vegetarian, I feel better. I don’t have to spend so much time thinking about my own fucked-up self. I can focus on another challenge. Like worshipping Jonathan Safran Foer.

The food comes quickly. Not many people here today. It’s also pretty late for lunch.

What other people think of me is so important to me that I am easily capable of being strict and compelling myself to give up almost anything by using the following trick: I simply tell everyone that I’m a vegetarian now, which forces me to do it for the rest of my life or else I risk looking stupid. It drives me to succeed. But I’m disciplined enough that I don’t eat the things I’ve sworn off even when I’m alone—I’m like an alcoholic who’s dried out. I figure that if I allow myself to be weak even for a little while, it will only make things more difficult going forward. So I’d rather just go ahead and bite the bullet.

After the meal we joke around with the owner’s family and then pay the bill, which is always the same price—for two vegetarian dishes and a big bottle of mineral water.

We take the same route back home to our apartment. Georg takes off his pants once we’re inside, emerges in his cowboy underwear, and tries to master the chaos my daughter and I create in the apartment on a daily basis.

I kill time because without my daughter in the house I don’t really have anything to do. As a result of our fucked-up patchwork family, I constantly have to deal with the reality that she’s at her father’s place. Good for her and good for him. Shit for me. But I should be quiet. The taking-care-of-everything machine can idle in the driveway for a while; the selfish woman I was prior to having a child can give herself free rein. Act like a kid again.