Hall Past

Geek Pride time again

! For this one, I decided to go for "movie geek," albeit with a sprinkling of general geek culture. And, given the origin of the term, what better archetype to play with than the hall pass? I hope you enjoy it. And now, on with the show!

--

The silence struck me first. No sounds of arguing children reached my ears, a rarity in a house with two tweens. A heavenly scent came next; Courtney had prepared my favorite meal, a pan-roasted chicken and mushroom recipe she'd stumbled across while we were still dating.

My wife of nearly fifteen years poked her head out of the kitchen entryway, her chestnut hair freshly styled in a long bob, and her heart-shaped face made up for a night on the town. The form-fitting black dress completed the effect, showing off her modest but pleasant curves. They might have grown softer and ever-so-slightly more generous since we'd met almost two decades before, but I still enjoyed exploring them. Given the way she'd dolled herself up, I expected to be planting the flag once more later that night.

"Dinner's almost done, handsome."

I dropped my laptop bag on the foyer floor, then moved in for a kiss. She returned it happily before pulling back to giggle and run a thumb across my lips. "I think this color looks better on me." When I tried for another, she ducked backwards with a playful admonishment. "Gregory Taylor! Unless you want that chicken to burn, you--"

I silenced her protestations with a kiss, albeit a shorter one than I would have preferred. When I'd finished--for the moment, at least--I chuckled, "Go on, you," waiting until her back was turned to lightly slap her pert little butt. That elicited a cry of fake outrage from my wife, followed by a wiggle of said derriere.

I went to set the table, but she'd beaten me to it. Courtney had laid out two place settings of the good china on our kitchen table. A small, intimate dinner, then, complete with a lit taper as the centerpiece. That explained the absence of the children. "Where are Tyler and Zoe?"

"My folks have them." She looked over one shoulder, a coquettish set to her features. "For the weekend."

"For the weekend?" Court had gone to a lot of effort. I found that strange, given that we'd gone out just the week before to the theater; strange, but certainly not unwelcome. Perhaps a little concerning, though. Had I forgotten an important date? No, that didn't make any sense. It wasn't her birthday or mine, and our anniversary had passed only a few months before.

For a moment, I thought about guessing, but that had never been the way in our relationship. We didn't play those silly games, instead choosing to honestly admit when one or the other of us might have screwed up. "Did I, ah, forget something? I mean, this is great, but..."

Courtney half-turned towards me, and I saw something disquieting flicker across her face. Not anger or irritation, something more like... Sadness? Regret, maybe? I couldn't quite define it. Not a happy emotion, and one she quickly abandoned, only to replace it with a too-bright smile that didn't quite match her tone. "No, no, not at all. I just... I wanted to do something nice tonight for you. For, uh, for us."

For the first time that evening, I felt truly unsettled. This wasn't like her. Don't misunderstand; I could easily see Courtney whipping up a special meal or even planning a surprise adults-only weekend at home, at least every once in a while. She did her best to show her love for me with gestures like these when time and energy permitted.

No, it wasn't the surprise itself that concerned me. It was the expression that had flickered across her face, or rather my belated recognition of its nature: guilt.

"Court..."

My wife turned away and opened the oven. "I need to get the chicken out. Can you pour the wine? Please?" The last word came out differently from the rest. Quiet. Afraid. As if, had I answered "no," her life might fall apart.

I did as Courtney bade, noting that she'd gotten the perfect bottle of wine as well, a sauvignon blanc that should pair well with our meal. My brow furrowed when I read the label. She'd made an extravagant selection; the vintage was too old, the brand too premium for a simple candlelit dinner for two, even one meant to kick off a weekend alone together. It wasn't a "just because" purchase; it was a "because" one.

At first, I thought the "because" must be one not of her making: an illness, or a layoff, or some other tragedy that might harm our family. Perhaps the guilt she displayed wasn't for something she'd done, but because of what was being done to us, and for her role as bearer of bad news.

That didn't make sense, though. Courtney had given me unwelcome news in the past, and I'd never shot the messenger then. She didn't go through this kind of rigamarole, either, always preferring to rip the band-aid off.

Then, I thought perhaps she wanted to do something that would require forgiveness or permission. That didn't make much more sense, either. I couldn't remember the last time she'd buttered me up. I don't mean that in a "it had been so long" sense; I literally couldn't remember her ever buttering me up for something. As I've already stated, our relationship had always been more honest than that.

Or so I thought.

Courtney served as I sat, plating my meal first, then hers, the pained smile still plastered on her face. This hadn't gone as she'd planned; any fool, even I, could see that. She put the pan in the sink and sat, then raised her glass. "To us."

Frowning, I raised mine and clinked it against hers. "To us."

She drank far too deeply and far too fast, emptying half the glass in one go, before taking a deep breath to enthuse, "Let's dig in!"

"No," I said, but Court had already taken up fork and knife, carving into her chicken breast with laser-like focus. "Courtney, I said, 'No.' Stop ignoring me and tell me what's going on."

The tightness in her voice could easily be either anger or fear. Funny how close those sometimes are. "Please. Please, can we eat and- and go to bed? I wanted to talk about it tomorrow, to-"

My tone softened. "Honey, just tell me. I love you. Whatever it is, it'll be okay." I was so certain of that. So foolishly, foolishly certain.

Courtney looked down at the table for the span of several heartbeats before nodding once, as if half to herself and half in answer. Then she stood, her gaze remaining firmly fixed away from me as she left the room without a word.

I listened, but her stockinged footfalls gave no sound to indicate which direction she'd headed. When my wife returned a minute later, one hand behind her back, her face bore an expression that I can only describe as "stoic." It was the face of a woman staring into the eyes of her executioner; or, perhaps, of the executioner staring into the eyes of the condemned.

As Courtney sat once more, she took the item which her body had concealed from my view and placed it on the table, her hand still covering most of it. What I could see, the edges of a laminated piece of cardboard a bit larger than a playing card, stirred a distant memory, one almost forgotten. She slid the index card across the table to me, her palm atop it the whole time. It must have taken no more than a couple of seconds to reach me, but the slow, dawning realization of what it was and what it meant turned those seconds to hours in my head.

"No," I mouthed, willing it to be anything other than the document I remembered. Courtney nodded, unhappiness coloring the stoicism she'd affected, then removed her hand from the table. I recoiled from the card as if from a venomous serpent. In truth, I would have preferred the snake; a cobra's venom can still your heart, but it can't kill your soul. What this damned thing represented could do both.

I remembered that the opposite side held drunken scrawl instead of my wife's normally immaculate penmanship, arranged in lines upon lines of rules and clarifications. The obverse bore my signature as well, similarly impaired by my inebriation that evening thirteen--hah, thirteen! How appropriate--years ago. However, the text on the front of the card, written in large, bold, block letters with a red sharpie, said everything that really needed to be said:

HALL PASS

"Courtney..." I searched for more words, so lost in what its presence there meant. Nothing came, though, just a strangled noise cut short by confusion and horror. My brain tried to run through all the things I could say, desperately searching for a way out of the nightmare it had stumbled into.

'Is this a joke?' Obviously not; everything she'd done that evening, every emotion she displayed or tried to hide, attested to the deadly seriousness of the matter.

'Why?' came to the fore, but I couldn't imagine what answer might satisfy me. It was closer to what I needed, though.

'When?' Yes. Yes! That was the right question, or at least it led to the right statement. Combine 'when' and 'why' to create 'wait.' I could find a way to forestall this foolishness, buy myself time to walk us back from the brink of oblivion.

I cleared my throat. "Courtney, we can talk about this. You don't need to- whatever you're not happy with, or, or, whatever you think you're missing, whatever's going on, we can talk about it. You don't have to do this, hon. Whatever it is, we can--"

The look of pity on her face almost killed me. Her words, spoken softly, as if to a beloved pet being put down, might as well have. "I already did, Greg. Months ago."

The world became white noise. She said my name again; I know that much. Over and over, actually, her expression and body language moving from sadness to worry to near-panic.

It's funny, the way a person's mind works. Even as the love of my life tried to reach me, I could only think of movies we'd seen in our youth, and of silly, sexy games we'd played back then.

--

Watchmen

bubbled up to the surface first. Courtney and I had seen it together not long before we married. The two of us both loved movies, and almost every one of our dates back then revolved around them. We saw everything that came out, regardless of genre. Hell, regardless of quality, too, good, bad, or indifferent.

We usually agreed on which movies fell into each of those categories, at least in the broad strokes.

Watchmen

was one of the few we didn't. I'd read the landmark graphic novel it was based on and saw a pale imitation, one which aped the book's imagery without understanding its themes. She hadn't and instead saw a beautifully shot spectacle that could stand well enough on its own.

That difference of opinion isn't why I thought of it, though.

In both versions, the heroes beard the villainous Ozymandias in his lair near the end of the story. He fights them to a standstill while explaining his diabolical plan, one which will see the deaths of millions to avert a nuclear war that would kill billions. When one of the heroes says that they can't let him do that, he responds, "'Do that?' I did it thirty-five minutes ago."

I knew it was coming before he said it. Courtney didn't; I heard her audible gasp at the revelation. The villain had won. The heroes had lost. Everything they'd done over the previous two hours was for naught. Worse, Ozymandias had made them complicit in his scheme; if they tried to bring him to justice, the sacrifice of millions would mean nothing, and they'd likely spark the very genocide he'd averted.

When Courtney told me she'd already used her pass, my brain unwillingly recalled the scene. "'Do it,' Greg? I already destroyed our marriage months ago." Only this time, she knew it was coming, and I didn't. I couldn't even gasp at the revelation, merely shrink into myself.

Somewhere in the hazy present, I registered Courtney's attempts to snap me out of my fugue state. Unfortunately for her, I wasn't done with my internal sojourn.

My head slowly swiveled towards the strip of plastic-filmed paper she'd given me. I think I laughed at it, or at least giggled. She'd given it to me, but I'd given it to her first, over a decade before. Made myself complicit, like the doomed, flawed protagonists of

Watchmen

.

Hall Pass

came next. Such a mediocre film to have left the cultural impact it did. According to the internet, the term "hall pass" in the context of a one-time extra-marital sexual liaison, typically with a celebrity, didn't show up until 2011, about the time the Farelly brothers' comedy hit theaters. But who knows? The internet is full of shit anyways.

What I do know is that, drunk, high, and lazing around our one-bedroom apartment shortly after our first anniversary, my young bride and I got into a discussion about the idea.

We initially approached the conversation like two knife fighters at the beginning of a duel, circling and feinting, always looking for an opening. Neither of us wanted to be the first to admit that we, a pair of oversexed twentysomethings, might maybe, kind of, sort of, want to fuck some of the most beautiful people in the world, so long as we avoided any kind of consequences afterwards.

She copped to it first, saying that, if I okayed it, sure, she'd reluctantly consider banging Zac Efron. That let me admit that, oh, I dunno, maybe I might not kick Margot Robbie out of bed. Things went from there.

It was all a lark; we knew that it would never happen. I love Courtney, but she was maybe a 7, and I barely qualified as a 6. The notion that a supermodel or rock star might pick either of us out of a crowd for a night of meaningless sex was laughable.

From that starting point, though, we talked about exes and about crushes that had never quite managed to become smashes. Neither of us had many one-night stands, since we both much preferred sex with people we cared about, but we discussed those as well.

Sharing these thoughts felt strangely intimate, the honesty we'd always valued in each other taken to a level that might have inspired jealousy in other circumstances. However, there and then, it had the opposite effect; we both knew we were talking about our pasts and our fantasies, not the very real future we'd promised to spend together. To a pair of irresponsible children, it all felt awfully mature.

High on both THC and the euphoria of the moment, we started talking about deeper concepts like monogamy, then when and where we each might be able to forgive infidelity. We'd talked about these things before getting married, too, but only in the most perfunctory, "Cheating's bad, right? You don't cheat on me and I won't cheat on you" way. The default setting of the modern American marriage, if you will.

This time, though, the emotional intimacy of the moment allowed her to say, "As long as it happened once, I think I could forgive you. No, no, I know I could. I love you too much not to."

I thought about it for a while, then slowly nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I... I think I could, too. I mean, I'd like to think I could. People make mistakes. They're human. I'm not saying.... Like, this absolutely isn't me encouraging you to go out and--"

"No, of course not!"

"But if it happened once, with no emotional investment, and..." I laughed. "Shit, I don't know. It feels weird to think about it, but I love you, Court. I can't imagine my life without you in it, at least not over one night."

My wife leaned in and brushed her lips against mine, then went further into a deep, soulful kiss that seemed to go on for hours. When she broke away, Courtney breathed, "I love you, Greg. I can't imagine losing you, either. Not over something like that.

"In fact," she grinned, "I'll prove it."

"What?"

Court hopped out of bed and grabbed some index cards and a pen off her "desk," a rickety card table that her laptop perched upon. On one, she wrote

HALL PASS

, then handed it to me. "There. One bonafide 'get out of jail free' card. Break glass only in case of emergency." My bride waggled her eyebrows. "Or extreme, irresistible fuckability."

I laughed, "If you say so."

"No, babe, I'm serious! If, sometime down the road, a supermodel comes up to you in a club and says she wants to suck your dick, go for it! Or..." She smiled a little sadly. "... if, you know, years from now, you get drunk and make a mistake, I'll forgive that, too." Then the million-watt grin I'd fallen in love with returned. "I'd prefer it if you dicked down ScarJo, though. That sounds way hotter."

"Huh." I tilted my head to one side. "Like, what exactly do you mean by 'get out of jail free?'"

We were both gamers, which meant that we both knew from long experience that rules could be misinterpreted to the benefit of one side or the other. I had no intention of ever using my hall pass, but the part of my brain that looked at weaknesses in systems took over, the same one that had made my dungeon master in high school angrily stomp out after my barbarian killed the big bad of his meticulously planned year-long campaign before the villain could even speak.

Courtney had always been the more freeform of the two of us. After I'd convinced her to join me in my hobby, she'd been the roleplayer, more concerned with the improvisational theater aspect of the game. I, on the other hand, was a roll-player, the guy there to fight monsters, roll dice, and show off his tactical acumen. Still, she'd spent enough time with me for my inclination toward rules-lawyering to rub off on her, and thus began a spirited, playful discussion of what exactly a "hall pass" would entail.

I didn't go as hard as I might have in other circumstances; I was under the influence, for one, which meant even if I'd been at my most pedantic, I doubt I'd have succeeded in creating some ironclad devil's bargain. Beyond that, I still looked at the whole thing as more of a thought experiment than anything else.

Most importantly, the woman I adored more than life itself was giving me this pass, so I didn't see the need to make its stipulations incredibly arduous. I was never, ever going to use it in a million years. Expending the effort to perfect its language seemed pointless. "Good enough" was more than fine.

Still, it was fun to argue about it, for both of us, and we went through a dozen index cards that evening. The specifics eluded present-day Greg, going through his crisis of faith in a fugue state, but I remembered the broad strokes:

The giver of the hall pass would absolve the bearer of any infidelities that took place within one 24-hour period, with no recriminations or guilt trips. The giver of the hall pass could ask questions about the specifics of said 24-hour period, but the bearer had sole discretion as to what they would and would not disclose. The bearer would use condoms and undergo testing for STDs before resuming sexual intimacy with the giver. The giver would stay married to the bearer, and the two would continue to love each other to the end of their days.

Simple. Easy. Unbelievably naïve.

After Courtney had filled out the final version of the card, signed it, and presented it to me, I felt self-conscious. I'd promised her the same thing, hadn't I? To forgive her if she strayed once? She smiled at me, but not expectantly; this was a gift she'd freely given to me, not a transaction between the two of us.

Which, of course, made me feel like an asshole.

After staring between my wife and the pass she'd given to me a couple of times, I put my own smile on--it felt honest at the time--and said, "Why don't you fill out another one so I can sign it?"

The night we exchanged the passes marked the best lovemaking of our relationship to that point. Not the best sex or the best fucking; when we got going, we really got going, and we knew how to press each other's buttons better than anyone else ever had. That night, though, and well into the morning, we took things slow, with some of the most vanilla sex possible yielding an experience we've only occasionally replicated in the years since.