Bizarre Thoughts While Making Love

    I lie on my back, naked, spread open as he advances up from my ankles, licking and making “ummm-ummm” noises.  I figure they’re supposed to help turn me on so I make “hmmm-ooh” noises back.  The mating call of the twenty-first century.  I wonder if my father and grandparents are looking down at me from heaven right now.  No, otherwise Dad would have zapped Greg’s hairy ass with a lightening bolt for defiling his daughter.  I hope the neighbors can’t hear, and imagine them lying on the floor upstairs, with ears pressed to drinking glasses.  Or maybe they’ve bugged my room, like on the news that one time…they’re listening to the tapes and laughing and tomorrow I’ll find out I’m on the Internet.

***

    Shelly, my best friend and total nympho is jealous of Greg.  “Girl, you don’t know how lucky you are to have a guy who really gets into going down on you.” 
 

I can feel the heat rash spreading up my neck and over my face.  When I blush I look like a pomegranate.  We’re in the center of Luigi’s at peak lunch rush and there are waiters running by every second and she’s shouting about…that. 

“Will you shut up?  I told you I’m tired of you know-what.  Slurp slurp and then I’m supposed to be bouncing off the bed in ecstasy.  It’s not working.  I’m going to dump him.”
 

Shelly stares at me, a piece of lettuce hanging off her lip.  I watch it fall on her white blouse, leaving a streak of orange from the French dressing. 

“Break up with Greg?  But he’s, you know.  You aren’t going to get better than him at your age Deena.  After forty the men evolve into mutant short things, with comb-overs, ‘70’s leisure suits in sherbet colors, hair growing out of their noses and on the tops of their feet.”
 

I signal the waiter and pick up the check, “Gotta run Shell.  Lunch tomorrow?  Let’s do sushi.” 
 

Before she can say another word I’m out and on the street.  Thank god.  I have a date with Greg tonight and am going to end it, this time I mean it.

***

    Hey sugar lump Greg puffs in my ear, you feeling playful tonight?”
 

I roll my eyes, and pat his back like I’m burping him.  “What did you have in mind, tennis?”

I’d never noticed how Greg does a snort-wheeze at the end of every laugh, revolting.  He jiggles his eyebrows, my cue to run my hands through his hair and kiss his neck.  I get up and lock myself in the bathroom. 
 

It takes him twenty minutes to come looking for me.  “You all right in there?  Mr. Freddy is waiiiting.”
 

Mr. Freddy.  I had a next-door-neighbor named Mr. Fred when I was a kid.  Every time Greg starts going on about his weenie, I flash on an eighty-year-old man with stooped shoulders hobbling around the garden, peeing in the bushes when he thinks nobody is looking. 
 

I decide to give Greg a last chance, to test him.  But no matter how I try to change the game he slides us back on course.
 

“This little toesie went to the mall,” he says sucking on my big toe. 
 

“Mmm, hmmm,” I say. 

A flyer in the mail today advertised Coach Purses on sale at the mall.  I’ve always looked at them with longing but the prices are way too much for my budget.  Maybe I’ll buy one for spring in celebration of my new freedom.  Then I think of the men’s underwear on the page opposite.  What, do they wear jocks under their boxers and BVD’s?  All of them look so…generic Ken doll, round lumps with no clue to what they’re hiding. 
 

Deena, you aren’t listening.”
 

“Sorry, what?”
 

“Never mind, I can see you’re tired or something.”  His face says “frigid bitch” fits better.
 

“Yeah, maybe I am.” I’m about to add “of you” when Greg gives me his serious, time to discuss something important look.
 

He sits on the edge of the bed, massaging my foot.  “Listen Deena, I don’t know how you feel about our relationship…”

This is my cue to jump in and say I love him.  I don’t.  I’m thinking about French vanilla-hazelnut coffee, and if I can get Greg out of here soon I can buy a cup at the bakery before it closes.

 “Deenie, I…well I sort of met someone who, you know, understands me better than you do.”
 

“What does that mean?  I don’t understand you?”  I stare at Greg. 
 

“No, I mean we’re more compatible than you and me.”
 

“Where’d you learn what ‘compatible’ means, word of the day e-mails?”
 

“Fine Deena be a bitch.  I wanted to keep things civil, didn’t want to fight about this.”
 

“This what?  You’re cheating on me and I’m supposed to bake cookies and greet you with a smile?”
 

“Deena, that’s it.  I don’t want to cheat on you, it wouldn’t be fair.  That’s why I’m breaking it off, I mean us, breaking up.”
 

“You’re dumping me?”
 

“Ah, yeah.”  Greg stood and gathered his clothes from the floor.
 

I stared at this naked stranger, this person I thought I knew so well.  “Don’t I get a say in this?”
 

“What do you want to say?” He asked as he pulled on his underwear.  He didn’t look at me, didn’t stop getting dressed.
 

Words didn’t come so I cried instead.  Once the first tears came out the rest were easy and soon I was bawling.
 

“Deena…don’t.  This is hard enough on me.”
 

“On you?  You aren’t being dumped, how is this hard on you?  You leave here and go to cuddle with your new girlfriend while I sit alone with nobody.”
 

“You like it here alone.”
 

“That’s not the point.”  I snuffle, wipe my nose on the pillowcase.  “Who is she?  Do I know her?”
 

“I don’t want to talk about her.”
 

“Why not?  What does it matter now?”
 

“Okay, her name is shelly.”  He looked at me then, edgy as if waiting for a grenade to explode
 

“Shelly?”  I loathe the name.  “Shelly” is for a petite girl with big boobs, with hair that doesn’t frizz in humid weather.  “Shelly” never gets zits and pizza doesn’t make her fart.  “Shelly” is the exact opposite of me.  Something pinged in my brain.  God, I must be the stupidest person ever.  “Shelly?  As in my best friend Shelly?”
 

Greg shrinks in his skin as I watched.  He nods, the pasty bastard, then puts on a sneaker.
 

“Son of a bitch!”  I throw a shoe at him, then the cordless phone.  “You’ve been fucking shelly?”
 

He’s holding his arms over his head.  “It was an, you know, accident, I never meant too.  She came on to me and…”
 

I bean him with every book under my nightstand, then the reading lamp.  He dances around and yelps.  “And I thought I loved you.  Skunk sucking maggot, dirt pig pile of crap.  I’m raving; soon I’ll be rolling my eyes and speaking in tongues.  “Aren’t there enough girls in the world to choose from?  You…have…to…pick…shelly?”  I punctuate each word by hitting him with a high heel.
 

Greg grabs his other shoe and runs for it, and I watch from my living room window as he locks himself in his Nova.  He talks to someone on the cell phone before driving away.
 

“Crash, asshole,” I shout, fogging the window.   I wipe it clear; the reflection of my face is small and pinched.  He’s on his way to Shelly’s now, I know it. 

I rest my forehead against the cold glass and decide not to buy the Coach purse after all.

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