therapy

Yesterday I went to my therapist and rehearsed the conversation that I needed to have with D.  I guess what I'm unhappy about has to do with no longer talking the way we used to.  It's difficult for me to express myself that way, asking questions, because I always feel that problems need acton, not discussion.  Also, I sense that whenever I want to talk to her, she feels resentful, and distant, and lonely.  We feel like we are two little boats floating farther and farther away from each other on this vast ocean of isolation.  My therapist told me to find a time and a place, and start thinking about how she thinks about the situation.  Mentalize her thoughts.  A skill that I clearly lack.  I can't read minds, and I most certainly cannot read my wife's mind, even though I have felt for a long time that she's the person that I know better than everyone else in the world.  Does she feel lonely?  Does she think that I'm fat and unattractive?  Maybe she's tired of me because she thinks I'm sexually inadequate?  Maybe she's having an affair?  It could be one of the wealthy partners at the firm.  I wonder if it's that guy I've met once...dear god he's as old as my father...although admittedly quite attractive, and I imagine more than loaded enough to care for my children.  The more I think about this the more I feel uncomfortably feminine.  I remember when I was in middle school I had a period when I was scrawny and puny, then pudgy and androgynous, and felt less like a man than ever.  It's incredible how the hormones of 13 turns you from skinny to fat in no time.  My father wasn't very helpful either.  He himself is a bit on the push-over side of things, and not very athletic.  My twin brother felt a bit stronger, but he ended up a musician, so there's definitely nothing to learn from him.  Oh Ricky (Richard's his name, though only I'm allowed to call him Ricky between ourselves, because he associates it with Ricky Martin), I wonder what that piece of shit is up to.  I oughtta call him.  In middle school I decided to change my persona.  Joined the football team for a year, with a pathetic record, but learned a few tricks here and there, and especially useful was the access to the jock's weight room.  And talk like a jock.  That was a "skill" that came to me pretty quickly.  Maybe I'm fat again.  And I'm certainly hairier now than ever.

Always liked writing and math, though, and made some friends that way, and got to know some of Ricky's friends too.  Read a few novels here and there.  I remember zoning out during the football banquet at the end of the year, being benched most of the second year, making ever so little effort during practice.  Still, this popular guy facade made it easier to find a very pretty girl to go to the prom with.  My mother was thrilled.  My father was not happy about how big of an idiot she was...and I judged him for it.

"We really need to talk," I told D, trying to be as solemn as possible.

She stared at me uncomfortably.

"Ok.  Well do you want to talk here?"

I looked around.  It was 9PM.  The kids were in bed.  We were sitting next to each other on this $5000 piece of sectional that we bought from a local designer.

"Look, I'm not sure what's going on but I feel like our marriage is having seriously bad problems.  I feel like you are not talking to me at all, and we haven't been having sex very much for a long time.  I'm not sure what is going on and I need your help to figure it out."

Or something like that per my recollection.

The next hour was really weird.  I think she tried to have a genuine conversation with me.  She said she's sorry and she still loved me and that it was mostly because of work, and she did feel more distant and didn't know why.  Even though I think she tried her best to communicate and we each said "I love you" several times, I get this eerie sensation that we were in the middle of a break-up talk.  I joked around a bit, and started feeling her up and kissing her.  She looked uncomfortable, but I didn't stop.  I put my finger up her panties and started feeling the contour of her labia, first in between her legs then up, with the hairy part prickling on her silky underwear.  She whispered, "we can't do it here."  I didn't stop.  As I started to feel the dampness, something in me clicked.  I wanted to let the consequences rip spectacularly in the middle of our gaudily renovated post-housing bubble den.  I mercilessly suckled her nipples, darkened by more than a few months of lactation.  I pulled down my boxers by my ankles and pushed myself into her from behind--I don't remember the last time I did that, and I didn't last long.  She was wet, very very wet and warm and felt comforting and close, like a womb or some kind of glowing but fading childhood memory, like a perverse, absorbing kind of aggressiveness, enveloping, with no exit except for my muscle tightening, vaguely vacuous, primal contractions.  Ask your man to describe ejaculation to you.  And not just "it felt good."

Afterward, she was silent.  I offered to go down on her, but she said no.  She said we can't continue to communicate by having sex.  It wasn't right.  It felt dirty and cheap and abused.  I said you are my wife and I love you and I wanted to show you that.  She started to get teary and started to whimper but I knew she held back because she didn't want to wake the kids.  I couldn't stand looking at her like that, so I tried to hold her in my arms, but that only pushed her away as she walked swiftly back into our bedroom, stealthily shutting the door on her way.  When I tried to open it later I realized that it wasn't locked, but I assumed that she didn't want me in there.  I walked back downstairs bare footed, feeling the piercing chill of the tiles, and craving deeply of a cigarette.

I slept on the couch last night and I'm a complete mess today.  But I'm at the Starbucks now and the woman with the stroller is back.  I like her body.  I think I'm a dirty and fucked up individual.  I am an ugly brute, no better than any of the frat boys that I had the pleasure of knowing in my life.  I'm a degrading, wife-hating pathetic husband with no redeeming quality.  But looking at her I had a hard-on, and that's how I know that as pathetic as I was, I'm alive.