She tries to hide her shaking hands by fiddling with the paper napkin that wraps up the silverware on our table. She begins twisting it about, as she talks. She doesn't look at me. “I have never told anyone this story before.” She explains, to the napkin. “But I want other women to know it. Because this kind of thing is very lonely. I never told anyone because I was embarrassed. Not for me, for Him.”
She explains that she had been married to her husband a little over four years. He was in medical school. Money was tight and stress was high. Their second baby had just turned nine months. She had suffered some post partum depression and hormone imbalances that were just getting under control. She was having a really hard time “feeling sensual again. I was sooooo tired all the time and just felt blah, very unsexy... I was a worn-out mamma, I just wanted sleep at the times when he...expected me to be a hot momma.”
She then told me about “the first day.” She had taken the boys, (3 and 9 months) to the grocery store. Her husband stayed home, to "study." She came home from the store earlier than usual that day, too tired to finish all the shopping. She entered the office where he studied, the baby on her hip, the three year old at her heels. She stood at the door of the office. Her husband sat at his computer, completely nude. He had the lotion from the baby’s changing table at his right elbow. The top of the lotion was still open. Ironically the room smelled of baby lotion and cum and fresh leather, (the chair he was sitting in was brand new.) He was finishing an orgasm while at the same time frantically trying to click multiple images off the screen. He then jumped off the chair, grabbed a chocolate from the dish by the door and slid past her frozen body, down the hall and straight into the shower.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“ I fed the baby and put him down for a nap.” She replies, matter of fact. “That stupid, nasty old chair made me nauseous, for months“ (speaking of the new office chair). “ I got lightheaded and dizzy every time I sat in it. It was like visiting a place where someone was murdered. Part of me died in that chair. I felt so angry so betrayed.”
She tells me of the first few months of pain. The difficulty she has in trusting and forgiving him. She laid next to him at night and cried herself to sleep night after, night “At first he was really nice, overly nice but then he just got annoyed that I wasn’t just getting over it. I didn’t nag him or anything. I didn’t bring it up in fights, I was just kind of sad and melancholy all the time.”
She wondered what the girls he was viewing looked like. Who were they? Were they pretty? She suddenly became aware of her own bodily imperfections. She compared herself to his “porn girls.” She was conscientious of the post pregnancy weight she still had to lose. Of the “Baby belly.” She called it. She stressed about the stretch marks left by two pregnancies. Porn stars don't have stretch marks.
She felt trapped by the lack of funding for makeup, haircuts and beauty treatments. She had to do without.. She needed to look like his “Computer Girls.”
“ I was embarrassed about the way I looked but we didn’t have the money for me to do anything about it.”
She then became painfully aware of what “His Computer Girls” had that she didn’t have and she frantically began to do all she could to look like Pamela Anderson, Jessica Simpson or any one of Hugh Hefner’s known girlfriends. She studied makeup artistry specifically the work of Alexis Vogel and other artists that were known to have influenced the iconic “sex kitten” look.
“We couldn’t afford for me to get my hair done so I poured gallons of sun in into my hair to trying to turn it "playmate blonde". I wore sooooo much make up and I put it on just like the girls in playboy. Dark black liner, cat eyes and pale super shiny lips. Ugh, and I used self tanner!” (Ironically, he refuses to kiss her when she has lip gloss on.)
“Do you think this behavior was a direct result of you sudden awareness of his porn?” I asked.
“ I don’t know.” She said “ I guess I was afraid that his porn girls had something that I didn’t....I even shaved off all my pubic hair because I heard that was what porn stars did.” She thought maybe he would like her better.
“Did this change anything” I asked.
“ Don’t think he even noticed. He never said anything.” She replies, blankly into the air over my left shoulder, still twisting at the napkin; It was beginning fray and the moisture from her hands was starting to weaken the fibers.
She struggled silently for weeks. Afraid to talk to her husband about it because he showed so much guilt and sadness when she brought it up. “When I talked about it just bugged him. He was upset that I haven’t forgiven him yet. At first he told me that I could take as long as I needed, to forgive him. But he was upset when I still had feelings about it months after it happened. I think it was because it made him feel guilty.”
She explains how much she desperately needed to talk to someone. She thought about leaving him for a while, but she had no where to go, no place to stay. Besides, if she left people would find out what he had done. She never talked to her friends about it. Never sought counseling and “never, never, ever told anyone.” She felt that she needed to protect him, to hide their awful secret, so for seven years she hid the truth from everyone and she suffered in silence.
“ I would have really liked to go to couples therapy ;but we could hardly afford to pay attention let alone pay a therapist. I really wanted him to grovel.” She explained. “I wanted a really big sorry, like flowers, or a sorry note or him to get on his knees and beg forgiveness....it never happened. He swore that he would never, ever do porn again. He said I could ask him anytime and he would tell me the truth. He told me it was okay to talk to him about it. But it really wasn’t. I guess it took me too long to figure that out.” She trusted him. Through the years she occasionally would begin to doubt and ask him if he was still clean. He responded well to it for a few years but as time went by, affirmations of his sanitary viewing practices became hostile.
She begins twirling the napkin between her thumb and forefinger. Little bits of it start to crumble off. She absent mindedly rolls them into the table. Suddenly she needs lip gloss. Without a mirror and with an expert hand she smears Jessica Simpson brand lip gloss onto her perfect lips. It’s smells like overripe strawberries. Every man in the room notices. She doesn’t.
Her fingers continue absently working the napkin. Twisting and turning it between her brightly painted fingers. The interview ends. As I gather my notes I realize that she has sculpted the napkin into a rose. I resist the urge to take it with me. The waiter picks it up and looks at it for a moment. Then he adds it to the pile of disposables on his tray and carts it off to the kitchen.
No comments:
Post a Comment