I was conscious of my wife's breast on my shoulder. She was leaning over me looking at an email I was reading out loud from a friend. Foolishly, when I finished I click a new post from another friend. The picture that exploded onto the screen was of 18 entirely naked women in two rows of 9, all in the same pose, all without a smile, all with their arms down by their sides. Below, there was a tasteless, misogynist joke.
After the shock of the images wore off I sped my mouse to the corner of the page to get rid of the picture but before I got there Pat asked, "Which one would you pick?"
This isn't something my wife would say. I didn't know what startled me more, the pictures, that she hadn't freaked when it appeared or that she asked the question.
But fine, I'll play the game. I seemed to have her permission so I stilled the mouse, looked more closely at the individual pictures and pointed to the one with a pleasant, kindly face in the top row. Her rounded peasant's face was far from attractive but she did have long brown hair falling off wide strong shoulders past breasts that would nicely fit into the palms of my hands and she had nicely rounded hips parenthesizing the thickest, lushest bush of them all. "Her," I pronounced. "Which one for you?" I joked to cover my discomfort.
But she wasn't feeling discomfort, nor did she hesitate. She pointed to the one on the top right, the one with the heavy, sagging breasts and slightly bowed legs who wore a look of strong determination as if she was resolutely staring down the photographer.
"Who's second," I said, getting over my surprise that she'd actually pick one — and that we were really doing this; we hadn't spent this much time this close in over 20 years.
She looked carefully then the nail on her finger tapped on an over-weight blond with a slightly dopey look and a conspicuously swollen belly and a navel that somehow looked like it was two inches off centre. "She looks interesting," then added, "why would they do that? Why would anyone just stand there like that?"
"They didn't. They were individually shot then spliced together." It was easy to see.
"But they still stood like that for a photographer."
"For the money, I'd guess."
She continue to glare at the screen, she was obviously fascinated. "They're all someone's daughters."
"Different times, Pat. And they're Eastern European; they probably have a much different attitude towards nudity than we do, and of sex, too, for that matter." I felt a pang of regret the moment the word 'sex' came out. We didn't talk about sex. Ever.
But she didn't seem to hear me; she continued studying the figures, or I assume she was. Then she asked, "Would Janice do anything like that? Would she stand there and let herself be photographed?" Janice was our daughter.
"Not for the money, never, but if there was a principle here, or a statement she believed in, ya, she might, don't you think?" I didn't believe that for an instant, I just wanted to. But our daughter wouldn't have stood in that line-up for any conceivable reason, she's too passive, unemotional, unengaged, disinterested, joyless, just like her mother has been since the day I married her — an event I've regretted every moment since. And the daughter is just like the mother only you can throw in the word 'odd,' too.
"God," Pat still seemed transfixed. "We're all just the same, aren't we? Yet we're so different. Which body do you think is most like mine ... well, would have been at their age?"
I was over the shock of the subject now and getting depressed at the conversation. Why should I feel guilt and shame and discomfort? And why would she ask such a stupid fucking question? "I should know?" I asked with unconcealed bitterness. "I've never really seen your body, have I?" She changes in the bathroom and any sex we have ... had, was in the dark.
If she thought this was a shot at her, she didn't react. "I was like that one," she touched the most uninteresting figures in the line-up, a complete zero, plain, hair cut badly short, nice body but miraculously sexless — the every-women you pass on the street and never see. "Might explain why I've kept myself under wraps, eh?"
There was a haunting hollowness in her voice that caused me to glance up at her. "Really? That's the way you see yourself?"
"And that's the way you see me, Mike, you've never hid that from me." She stood up and walked away.
I continued looking at the figure she had tapped. The woman was certainly the most sexless wallflower of the group. But it wasn't the body. The body was good, like Pat's, nice tits with terrifically big aureolas, pleasing hips, thighs and legs and a great clavicle, I've always been into clavicles for some reason. No, it wasn't the body that got me, it was the dull, sullen disposition of the figure. She was right. Of all the women up there that one was closest to her. She and that woman had the same colourless, characterless, bovine docility. Ya, the more I studied the picture the more I agreed with her; it didn't surprise me that she saw herself that way. And she was right, that's the way I saw her, too.
But still, I searched the group for a better version of her, one who was as thin as she is, one with her nicely shaped breasts and wonderfully shaped thighs. They were there in parts, but none of them seemed to be her: all except the one she selected had vibrancy, appeal and sexiness, even in their healthy death-like poses.
I sat back, defeated. I could have had any one of these other types and better, but 26 years ago when I was 19 and stupid, I chose her and now, here I am, looking at the image of a naked, sexless woman who we both thought pretty much personified my wife.
This part of my life was a mess. What do I do? What are my choices? What do I do with a thoroughly boring wife and a nearly deranged daughter? Choices? I didn't have any. I will go the distance with her, a joyless ride to the finish, I don't know why, but I will ... and there will never be a hint of appreciation for my loyalty, not even from a daughter who should have long since seen just how loveless her parent's marriage has been.
But Pat and I still share a bed and we still get into that bed at about the same time every night, to read, to peck at the cheek, to turn over, to ignore each other into sleep, me with thoughts of bodies and acts seen on internet porn; her? Doubtless, counting black-faced sheep as they leap over a white picket fence.
But not tonight. Tonight as I was reading she turned to me and lay on her side, her head propped up by a hand. "Do you think about women ... like them. Imagine them?"
This was the first question that has ever escaped her lips to me about anything to do with sex. I looked over at her as confused as I was surprised and decided, WTF, I'd actually give her an answer. "Sometimes."
Her eyes grew a tiny bit wider. "Undress them, with your eyes?"
"I don't make a habit of it, but sure, I've done that, everybody's done that, probably women as well as men." This, I knew, would be news to her.
She seemed to digest this for a moment before saying, "You look at pornography on the internet." I noted that this was a statement not a question.
Fuck you, I'm not running from this. "Ya, I do. Discreetly." I was still holding my book in a reading position, now looking at the ceiling.
"I was talking to Ruby about pornography last year. She said all men look at pornography on the internet. That was the first I ever thought about it, that you might be looking at it, too, and I thought, ya, why wouldn't he?"
I didn't say anything. Let her think what she wants.
"Then one day I went into the history on your browser."
A jolt of guilt shot through me but it passed quickly, flickered into relief, then into indifference. It surprised me but I found I didn't give a shit that I'd been caught. It was about time.
But maybe she wasn't going to criticize because she quickly added, "Women look at pornography, too. I read up on it. A lot of them: I saw as much as 40% of viewers of pornography are women."
I stayed silent wondering where this was going with this ... and where she got her statistic; it couldn't be true.
"So I started looking at it, trying to understand it. This was last year, actually more than a year ago." The hollowness in her voice was still there, she was going to tell me now how disappointed she was in me ... and I was gong to pretend I cared.
I stayed silent, stayed focussed on the ceiling.
"It was the smiles that got me ... right away. I thought pornography was supposed to be exploitative and crude. It didn't look that way. It looked more like fun."
Now that surprised me enough that I peeked over at her, but it angered me, too, it was like the observation of a child talking about nuclear fission: pornography is a subject my wife knew nothing about, pretending otherwise was preposterous. I stayed quiet, went back to looking at the ceiling but I was developing attitude, too.
"Mike?"
