I had come in for Thursday evening happy hour and ended up bullshitting with some people and stayed a little later than usual. I'd had dinner at the bar, which is not too bad, well this place has become a sort of home-away-from-home for me. When they remodeled the old hotel, I figured they'd turn the bar into some sort of corporate disco thing, but they were smart and kept its hometown character, just replaced some of the furniture and stocked the bar better. The regulars and locals kept coming in, plus of course tourists and people staying in the hotel.
The bartender Andy and I go way back, to when he used to be at Cooder's, on Second Street. I like this better though, The Mop Shop. I guess I could be home watching TV or something, but I kind of enjoy having people around. I don't have what you'd call "friends," and don't want any; I like my privacy, my freedom, and hanging out at the Mop Shop is just about the right amount of friendliness for me. I can get to know someone as well as I want, and if I feel like getting up and walking away nobody really cares.
The happy hour crowd had mostly drifted off and I was nursing a beer, thinking about the meaning of life, or rather the meaninglessness of it. It was pretty quiet, a couple of regulars who I never talk to, a handful of strangers who'd wandered in, probably tourists. A couple sitting next to me had some papers on the bar and were talking quietly, pointing occasionally at the papers, shuffling them. I could see there were a grids with checkmarks here and there, but it was none of my business. We get business people here, passing through town, making deals.
I heard the lady next to me saying, "You've checked a lot more items than I have, I think it's my turn." The man said, "I agree, but you have to pick something." "Well, it's hard," she said, "And scary."
I was trying not to eavesdrop, honest.
"The one in the elevator," she said. "God, Robert, I came this close to getting caught."
"Yeah but you made that guy's day."
She laughed, "I think you're right."
"Nothing like that ever happens to me," the man said.
"Or me," she said. "Unless I start it."
"See," he said, "That's why this is so good. Think how boring life would be if we didn't shake the dice and throw 'em sometimes." But I wasn't eavesdropping, honest.
Andy came to our end of the bar, "Get you folks anything?" I ordered another beer and the couple next to me got a round of some kind of cocktails.
They looked over at me and nodded and I smiled. "Workin' on your off-hours, are ya?"
"Oh no," the woman said. "This isn't work."
"Oh, okay," I said. "Sorry, it looks like work."
"This is fun stuff," the husband said. They were a nice-looking couple, solidly middle class, I figured two six-figure careers, no kids.
"All right," I said, not wishing to pry. They were whispering between themselves, or talking under their breath.
"This is marriage stuff," the husband said.
"Working on our marriage," the wife said. She had straight blond hair, just the way I like it, and nice knockers which were not very well concealed under an invitingly-unbuttoned top, very fashionable looking. I could see the lace of what I assumed to be an expensive, brand-name bra.
"I see," I said. "I suppose I shoulda worked on mine some," and I laughed sarcastically.
"Didn't work out, huh?" the husband said. He seemed not to be concerned about prying.
"Naw," I said. "Crashed and burned. My fault, of course. Well it's been a couple years, ya get over these things." I was not sure this last part was true, but I was hoping it was.
"Well you've heard of Fantastica, haven't you? We're doing that."
"Uh, yeah, of course. I loved those ballerina elephants," I replied. "Laughed my head off."
"Good one," the wife said, lifting a glass to me and taking a sip. "I'm Ellen, this is Robert."
"Hi, I'm Doc. I'm guessing that Fantastica is not a Disney movie from a million years ago?"
"No," Robert said. "I think that's Fantasia. I saw that in school. It was good."
"I see, so different thing, cool." I didn't know what Fantastica was, never heard of it, and actually didn't give a fuck. I did, however, like the look of this lady's tits.
"I guess not being married you would not have tried it," Robert said. "It's a kind of new thing the psychotherapists are recommending. At first it was for, you know, couples in trouble, but it works so good they are saying everybody should do it."
"I see." You might assume that I would be cynical about this kind of bullshit, and you would be correct. "So what is it, like meditation or something, yoga?"
"Oh no," Ellen said, "This is a whole new concept, in the last few years. Doctor Amberstapp had the first studies on it, at, uh, a university in Holland, I think."
Robert said, 'The idea is that people in a marriage or a relationship unintentionally put each other in a state of confinement. They say, 'When the body is caged the mind runs wild' in a marriage."
Ellen: "Their studies found that something like ninety percent of married people are fantasizing constantly about things they can't do because, you know, they're married."
Robert: "And the other ten percent are lying about it."
"Yeah, tell me about it," I said. "'Cept I made the mistake of uncaging the body a few too many times and got caught."
"Yeah, you see," Robert said, "That's exactly it. You uncaged -- that's exactly what they call it -- but without your partner's support. We call that 'cheating.'"
I laughed. "You don't say? That's what my wife's lawyer called it, too."
Ellen said, "So what Fantastica does is, you each make lists of your fantasies, and you share them with your partner. Usually you do this along with a counselor. And then there is a system for learning to allow your partner to uncage. And, just as hard, allowing yourself to uncage."
"I'll tell you, it's terrifying sometimes," Robert said.
It sounded like bullshit to me, but that was not an argument I wanted to start. If this is what they want to do, what do I care? Maybe it'll work for them -- I am obviously not the guy to be dishing out marital advice.
Ellen said, "So that's what we're doing. We each make two Fantastica lists, one for ourselves and one for our partner."
"What you'd want the other person to do?"
"Exactly," she said. "In a healthy relationship all of our fantasies are not about ourselves, we also fantasize about our partners doing things."