Lie we back, smell our creation,
Skin on skin and fluid spent.
Two angels felled, find explanation,
Pulling closer into heavens scent.
-----
Melanie teeters, almost falling, longing for the rush... the headlong (sharp inward breath) downward plummeting, (pant-pant-pant) almost there, keep going... (I'll kill you if you move just one inch sideways) out of control.... (oh god, oh god) for the orgasm that she is promised. She can almost touch it. It's right... Oh god... There... It's so...
Ordinary.
Predictable.
Comfortable.
Over.
She watches him stand and pull his pants back up. Warm semen dribbles down her thigh. He has one chance.
One step, two steps, three steps and he's at the door. Will he? One strong arm reaches out and grabs the door handle. It opens. Four steps and he's gone.
He doesn't look back. Just finished - like some sex toy, some duty, some job round the house that had to be done. No cuddling, no eye contact, no moment together, (really together) afterwards. Just up and on with the pants and "kerflooosh" he's flushing the toilet.
Used? Not really. Pissed in? Maybe. Like a receptacle for a bodily function? No, still not quite right. A necessary biological consequence of marriage? Closer. A pleasurable one - he's never 'bad' about it. There's nothing really at all to complain about. It's just... Such an empty gesture. Like that feeling you get when you're at a party and someone shakes your hand, says the right words and everything but they are already looking at someone else.
"Oh grow up Mel! You're not a needy teen." She admonishes herself and rationalises her needs away... "He's busy and stressed at work. That's probably all he's thinking about. It's not his fault. Jesus hasn't he always given 110 percent for you and the kids. To the detriment of his health at times but if he's not thoroughly focused on the 'sex' it's because he's tired, doesn't mean he didn't fucken love it. Come on girl. Grow up."
"Shut up Mum," she says out loud to the critic inside her head.
"Still horny though aren't you?"
"Ahuh," She runs a finger or two or three - it's a bit like chocolate, who can count - straight to her sticky cunt and pushes them roughly in. That's it. Hard. Harder. Fast. Another finger? She can hear him change the channel on the telly miles away and works her arm so fast it almost cramps. "Will he hear me? God, I'm making some fucken sloppy noises, (gasp) that's it, (fuck) yup (fuck) yes, oh yeah..."
And floating miles away, her knuckles still buried in her sodden crotch, her pussy spasming on her hand and her thumb teasing her clit she thinks, "I need something. I don't want to hurt him. I don't want to lose all this. But god, a girl needs -- more. How do I wake him up?"
"What exactly does that taste like?"
She drifts slowly back and she raises her hand and looks at the sticky white consequence of freshly fucked then fisted on her hands. "Interesting," she thinks, giving it a tentative lick, "Kind of like -- sweet - snot."
Moments later as she showers, He pokes his head around the bathroom door.
"Gotta go love," he says, "you right to grab a bottle of red for me while you're out today?"
"Huh, sure. Variety?"
"Something simple, you know me. Seeya tonight."
"Okay then, love you."
But he's gone already and it hangs mid-air, forgotten in the comfortable everyday miasma of ordinary married life. How did they get so distant? She wishes she could grab him and shake him sometimes. Anything to get his attention. He was fun once. Alive even but now unless he gets it in a memo from work it doesn't register on his radar.
Taking a deep breath in she steps out and towels off her 'thirty something' body. The full length mirror on the bathroom wall appraises her with her own contemptuous stare and delivers an unkind but accurate reflection.
"Mirror, Mirror on the wall, go fuck yourself," she flips herself off in the mirror.
"Now, now - words can hurt."
"Oh great - now I'm personifying the mirror. First sign of madness is talking to yourself, I wonder how far along talking household objects is?"
"Not that far along; in any case you should be more concerned about toning that housewife bod dear, not your mental health."
"Fuck off, nothing wrong my bod. Look..."
She turns back and forth striking some imagined modelling poses and finishing with a power-lifters chest flex. "Hulk has nice titties." She mocks the mirror in her best marvel hero voice.
"Could lose a pound or two but I look the same as I did when finished college. 5'4", 120lbs, 34,24,34. Okay, 34,25,36. Now fuck off you judgemental glass bastard."
Wrapping a towel around herself she makes her way to the bedroom and dresses for her day. A comfortable bra, cream with nicely adjusted straps, a pair of floral print cotton undies, faded blue jeans and a plain pink baby doll blouse. A few minutes with some blush and lippy, a hair tie in her dark brown mop and a smile and she was ready for the world. She takes her handbag from the table, the car-keys from the dresser and picks up her phone off the charger on her way to the door.
"So, Siri, how's my calendar this morning?"
"I don't understand?"
"Why is my life so boring, Siri?"
"Would you like me to look something up for you?"
"No, what I would like, is for my husband to pay attention while he fucks me, instead of using me like a vagina vending machine."
"Searching for vagina vending machine."
"Siri, you're sweet but you're a fuckhead sometimes you know." She throws her phone on the seat of the hatchback and drives off into the morning.
The city is busy on Fridays and parking is difficult to find. Eventually she gets a space in a side street near the mall. It's spring and the gardens are flowering everywhere, sweet fragrant floral smells waft on the gentle breeze and the warm sun caresses her shoulders. The susurrations of traffic noises calm her morning mind and she loses herself in shopping lists and coffee shop menus.
"A bottle of red for dick-face. Some welding rods, some black paint, a few groceries for tea, milk and toilet paper." She lists, "What a glamourous life."
The welding rods are for her latest sculpture. An 8 foot tall, flowing and jagged arrangement of scavenged metal odds and ends that is meant to fit the theme, "From the ashes" but at the moment looks more like what happens when a robot throws up. Dad taught her to weld on the farm and she'd much rather the sporadic work from home producing these commissioned items than to have to navigate the social minefield of corporate employment.
Her business degree hangs on the wall in the den, testimony to three years spent in college feeling awkward, lonely and like a flowery peg in a pin striped hole. The study was easy, the dealing with people was something she struggled with, preferring less conflict and more time alone with a novel. She met Darren in the library. He was fun back then. All pursuit, dancing and flowers, books of poetry, late nights spent talking; plotting, dreaming and going at it like rabbits. She smiles remembering their insatiable love making.
"Should have been arrested a few times," she tells the rear view mirror.
"Now you probably need to handcuff him to get him to stop long enough to talk more than 4 words at a time." It replies.
"Good idea, I'll get some of those fluffy pink ones."
An hour later she seats herself in her favourite caffeine apothecary and begs for her drug of choice. She hands over seven dollars, her soul and a promise of her first born child for the cup labelled 'Mel' containing her dose of 'you all shut the fuck up now' and makes her way to her favourite table. It's an umbrella shaded table for two facing the street and as she sips her guilty pleasure she indulges in her other passion, people watching.
A twenty-something brunette at a table across from her is flirting outrageously with an older man. His back is to Mel but she can see his broad shoulders and flecks of grey in his hair. His business suit suggests to her that he is a secret agent with a licence to kill. This young smiling boob tube full of jellyfish is his mark and he works expertly to seduce the information he needs from her. Later he will ravish her in a luxuriously appointed hotel room and eat room service off of her bare arse.
A young waitress interrupts the couple with the bill and as they stand the couple embrace. It looks intimate and tender and a little awkward. She leans up and appears to kiss him briefly then she walks away, her pert derriere swaying like a bag full of pythons in the little black skirt. What she wouldn't give to have Darren follow her with eyes as drunk with lust as she imagines 'double-oh-fuck-me' watches his date. He turns to leave the café and Melanie's heart freezes.
Ice lances of fear and horror stab her heart as she recognises her husband. She hides behind her menu and giant lonely rocks drop one by one into her pounding heart. The first tears leave her eyes and it all starts to make sense. His pre-occupation, the late nights, the missed calls, the stale that has crept in. She watches him pay the bill and leave, making his way his car. How did she miss his car, she wonders. How did he not see her when she ordered? Who the actual fuck is that bitch! Who the fuck does he think he is?
Slowly, the horror and heavy in her chest is seeded with fury. Her coffee spoiled she makes her way home. The drive is tumultuous; tears then anger, grief and loathing, disgust then finally empty, hollow, sadness. She stands in the middle of the kitchen. The phone rings. She doesn't move. She has no idea how to move or what direction to even take. It's like her whole existence has vertigo and there is no up or down.
The answering machine kicks in. "Yeah love, it's me. I've got some stuff on this afternoon, I'll be late again. Fuck I hate this machine. Call when you get this ok?"
She crumples to the floor and cries.
-----
Some hours later she rises from the couch. Her face is salty and her throat hurts from sobs. Rinsing in the kitchen sink, her mascara stained Halloween mask fades and all that remains is a flushed, heartbroken woman desperately trying to make sense of things and find a path through her new jungle. Absently, she wanders to the garden shed and pushing tools and junk aside she digs and rummages, emerging finally with her prize; a crumpled packet of lucky strikes.
She sits and sucks great lungful's of nicotine in, hacking and coughing after 6 years of not smoking. When they had moved in together she gave away the 'filthy habit' as her mother called it, but as of right now he could go and get fucked.
"Nice choice of words, arsehat." She chides her inner critic. "I bet he's doing just that."
"Oh fuck, Mum is gonna love this." As nicotine caresses her frayed nerves and sinks its hooks back into well-known receptors a course of action begins to suggest itself.
"I need to think. I need to think before I act. He's just a man. It might be just a fuck or something. He might get it out of his system. Fuck him. Keep it in his fucken pants. Get fucked 'just a fuck'; I gave out no hall passes. Keep it together. If it is the end there's a lot to do and it all needs doing smartly. Why can't I just scream and smash his trophy cabinet or make a fucking scene like ordinary women. (She has a mental image of the Jerry Springer show.) Fuck. I need to keep my dignity. Easier said than done, you're going to your Mums aren't you."
A little more than half an hour, three cigarettes and a trip to the toilet to throw up later, she picks up the phone praying that she gets his message bank.
