Myrna

Myrna likes to bang dead guys. I'd learned to live with that. So, my now ex-girlfriend who lives over a funeral home prefers the rigid dicks of guys who benefit from rigor mortis. I once was man enough to admit when I was beat. I mean, how could any living, breathing guy possibly compete with a fellow with an eternal hard-on? Hell, I used to get flaccid just thinking about it.

Myrna, on the other hand, became extremely aroused. The corpses, well they just went along for the ride.

It all began innocently enough. Myrna a few summers ago was looking for new digs after her roommates Dixie and Cherona had kicked her out of their New Town shared brownstone once they realized Myrna was not who she had claimed to be. (Myrna had led her roomies to believe she was descended from royalty of Lesbos — but that's another story, and concerns Myrna's quest for cheap rent at almost any cost.)

Myrna immediately spotted an ad in the Reader classifieds for a Far North Side funeral home, Shmuel Bros.' Last Resort, seeking a caretaker to live over its facility, mostly to keep an eye on things, and ensure no one walked off with dead folk. And to answer the phone. Myrna jumped at the opportunity.

While I was a tad uneasy about the concept of Myrna residing, and for me spending nights with her, above a funeral home — sharing living quarters so close to dead quarters — Myrna said she had no reservations whatsoever about the idea, and in fact found it intriguing. "No noisy neighbors," she'd gloated. "That's a plus. And I can crank my stereo loud as hell, and not worry about disturbing anyone!"

I couldn't argue with that logic. And I hadn't a clue yet as to what other perks there'd be there for Myrna's entertainment pleasure.

I first encountered Myrna on the Internet. There's a surprise, huh? It was quite by accident. Well, not really. But, I mean, it wasn't for the purpose of romance. Well, I wasn't seeking romance. Well, all right, maybe I was, but I wasn't seeking it exactly in a romance chat room. It was using something called the IRC. OK, that's like a chat room. Anyway, we met. She lived in Oregon, but eventually I convinced Myrna — twenty years my junior, having failed herself out of a prestigious private college she'd worked hard to attend after spending her high-school senior year living in Finland where she'd reportedly learned the fine art of orgy — to move in with me in my Ukrainian Village rat-hole efficiency. Here, Myrna returned to her studies, at the University of Illinois at Chicago. That was good for a semester, then she dropped out.

Meantime, things were pretty sweet. For me, more sex than I'd ever had in all the years hence. I wasn't even fazed by Myrna's multiple piercings (nose, tongue, right nipple, and navel) and tattoos (abdomen and left ankle), which normally would dissuade my attentions elsewhere — any other woman sans piercings and tattoos! Then one day Myrna decided she needed her own space — away from her boyfriend. So she moved out of our brief love nest and in with the gals in New Town. She'd said she needed to be away from our constant cuddling. It had been too intense.

But I digress.

Myrna first discovered dead guys' "incredibly rigidly raucously rideable" (as she termed 'em) dicks while seeking a place to keep her beer cold. One night when the small refrigerator in her funeral-home apartment kicked out, she grabbed its sole contents, a six-pack of Augsburger Dark, and whisked her way downstairs to the home's cold-storage area, where corpses were stowed in pullout drawers awaiting preparation for The Final Journey Home. Out of the blue, on a whim, she later claimed, she then sent 'em off with a bang, no one the wiser, not even the dead guys, who, were they alive, would've enjoyed the ride.

I know. I've gone along for the ride myself. Unfortunately, though, according to Myrna, my ride's less exciting. But, as I said before, that's a bit of truth I've learned to live with.

What about the relatives of the deceased, I remember once asking Myrna. Didn't she think someone might suspect. Maybe there'd be a glow about the corpse's countenance after one of Myrna's midnight mounts. Even dead guys can appreciate a good lay, I'd quipped to Myrna. That evoked from her a smile. "You're right," she'd said. "How'll they react when the dead guy starts coming?" Quite the resurrection it'd be, I'd noted. The idea brought a sparkle into Myrna's already-dazzling emerald-color eyes. "Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! He's risen," Myrna had gushed.

During one particular eulogy service, in the summer, on a ferociously hot day when the funeral home's air-conditioning was on the fritz, I, sitting in the rear — yes, "crashing" a funeral — overheard two women in seats ahead of me whispering amongst themselves.

"Eunice, tell me if I'm wrong, but when I was standing next to Earl's casket, I could have sworn I smelled...."

"Smelled what?" Eunice questioned.

"Well, uh, it smelled like Earl had just had sex."

"Sex? What do you mean you smelled sex?" Eunice interrogated her best friend of sixty-some odd years, Zelda.

"Well, you know, Eunice; it smelled as if someone had had an, um, an, um," Zelda quibbled.

"Had what?" Eunice demanded.

"Well, an orgasm," Zelda demurred.

"Oh, my God, Zelda, are you meshugine? Why in God's name would Earl, alashon, smell like an orgasm?"

That was more than I could bear. I wanted to shout out to all within earshot "Because my meshugine girlfriend is fucking the dead guys!" But I wimped out, stood up, and went my merry way.

It wasn't Myrna who drove me into analysis; I've seen a shrink for some time. But suddenly I felt more than ever I had to unload to an ostensibly uninterested third party.

Doctor Bluestein at first thought I was delusional. Or kibitzing. I am a kibitzer. But then he seemed to believe my tales of Myrna's after-hours DOA rendezvous. So obsessed was I with my girlfriend's "quirk," there was one occasion, when Bluestein seemed unusually quiet — normally, he often chimed in with psycho babble — that I feared looking up from the couch behind Bluestein's chair, half expecting to see him dead as a doornail, stone-cold gray, Myrna gregariously riding his departed but dutiful dork.

Bluestein eventually asked me to seek analysis elsewhere. "Frankly, Nathan, you've been freaking me out. Hell, now I'm in analysis — and it's freaking out my psychiatrist!"

I realized then that the realm of psychology was not the venue for unleashing my Myrna woes. What exactly was, however, I remained uncertain.

My folks adored Myrna. They of course had no clue. To them she was a nice young lady — even if she wasn't Jewish — and they envisioned that one day she and I would marry.

Both Mom and Dad acknowledged the fact that I needed "breeding-age stock" if I ever would have a chance at procreation. And Myrna — vivacious, smart as a whip, and cute as a button — filled the bill.

One night, at dinner, Dad questioned Myrna. "Do you think you'd ever want children?"

Myrna paused. Finally, smirking, she said "I suppose."

"Suppose what?" Dad pursued.

Myrna's grin widened. "Well, if the right man came along."

Dead silence. I chuckled, though for reasons other than my folks could've ever imagined.

"You don't think he has?" Mom threw in.

"It's quite possible," Myrna retorted. "But I'd like to keep him guessing." Whether or not Myrna that evening was referring to me or her latest passed-on paramour, Leo Feldman, a retired tailor, who during his lifetime had been reputedly "quite the ladies' man," I didn't know.

Deciding Myrna and I needed to get away from her regular goings on, I one weekend improvised, and whisked her away for a romantic getaway at a Galena B&B. The weekend went fairly well. The setting was serene, sobering and sensuous. Myrna and I made love more times during that one weekend than we had during our relationship to that point. I suddenly was insatiable and possessed of more stamina than ever before. My libido was out of control. Not that Myrna complained; though at times — and I can't say this for certain — it seemed as if Myrna was not entirely devoted to our wanton escapades. It was as if she was fantasizing about another man — maybe, just maybe, the by-then-interred sewing-smith playboy Leo Feldman. I found myself jealous of a buried stiff.

One day while sitting alone in my kitchen, feverishly trying to complete a New York Times crossword while trying my best to avoid thinking about The Myrna Quandary, I had an epiphany. An epiphany perhaps much delayed, but an epiphany nonetheless. I absolutely had to break up with Myrna.

"I'm dating a fucking necrophiliac," I yelled out, it finally dawning on me. But then there, too, was my inexplicable love for Myrna. It was difficult to deny. As insane as was her perverse proclivity, Myrna had won her way into my heart like no other woman ever had, or since has. "Fuck the necrophilia; she's unfaithful!" I cried out.

That was it. Myrna and I would be no more. I would break the news to her later that day, after taking in a double-feature at the Music Box — not ironically, "Weekend at Bernie's" and "Weekend at Bernie's 2."

Myrna took my decision surprisingly well. I was somewhat dismayed that she was not more brokenhearted. But then I knew she had an endless cache of suitors awaiting her. But then why had she spent her time also with a fellow who could return the favor? Some questions, I've since learned, cannot be answered. Not even by the likes of Doctor Bluestein, God bless him — probably these days a ward of Elgin's mental health facility.

For a time Myrna and I spoke by phone. I never asked what was up. Then our communication became strictly written correspondence, via e-mail. (DeadGuysRule was Myrna's user name, with an Internet service provider I'll save the embarrassment of revealing.) The last message I received from Myrna, actually an IM, was "Gotta go. My date's waiting." I didn't question her on that revelation.

"Have a good time," I typed back, but by that time she had signed off line.

Now and again I heard rumors about Myrna, from a cadre of coeds who apparently shared a Starbucks with both her and me.

"That chick lives over a funeral home," one gal blurted out.

"What kind of action do you think she can get living in a spook-house like that?" her girlfriend wondered aloud.

"She's a pretty neat person, though," another gal stated, having on several occasions, before her girlfriends arrived, engaged in idle banter with Myrna while waiting on their double-mocha lattes.

Since Myrna's and my breakup, I've managed to move on. I left my freelance journalism career for a full- time editorial position with a chain of suburban dailies. When your hours aren't your own, you've less time to wonder about things that might have been and those which should never have happened. I'm dating a co-worker, Sherry, one of my assistant editors, who, as far as I know, limits her kinky antics to handcuffs, Bosco and Dream Whip. To me now, post-Myrna, that's mere child's play.

"So, what was your last girlfriend like?" Sherry on one occasion asked of me.

"Quite the hellion," I responded, leaving it at that, glad that Sherry saw no need to pursue her line of questioning.

The last time I saw Myrna was at an art-gallery showing of a friend of mine's erotic paper cutouts. I suspected Myrna might be there, but had hoped to avoid her since our break-up — immediately following another funeral service, after I overheard the rabbi kibitzing with one mourner "Don't tell Sadie, but I think her Mort got lucky for the first time in forty years — since he's passed on."

That incident helped me make up my mind: not only was I in competition with eternally-rigid peckers, but it sometime soon would become known to all who paid their respects during a ceremony that ought be wrought with some degree of decorum — even a kibitz about the deceased, perhaps a pleasantly-memorable anecdote expressing a personality trait of his, would be acceptable compared to mourners and the rabbi gossiping about the dearly departed's possible post-mortem sexual antics.

I genteelly approached Myrna, and she smiled. "How are things at the home?" I inquired.

Myrna bowed her head. "Business is booming," she reported. "But I think I'm pregnant."

"The father isn't one of the dead guys," I earnestly suggested.

"Has to be," Myrna tearfully replied. "I haven't been fucking anyone else — you know, I mean who's living."

Admittedly my oft-warped sense of humor kicked in with the retort, "Well, guess it won't matter if it's a girl or a boy. It'll be cold as stone, a chip off the old man's headstone."

Myrna actually tittered. Then she walked off, and that's the last I've ever heard from her. No news reported in the tabloids about "Dead Man Fathers Zombie Child," so I suppose Myrna had an abortion, or somehow else kept things all hush-hush.

As for me, I break silence only because, well, how can you keep this kind of shit to yourself?