The nasty talk starting a dozen years after we were married—when we were at a church picnic no less. I was wearing a pair of jeans right out of the dryer, so they happened to be tight and clingy. My husband Carl told me he overheard two of his friends talking about how much they admired my rear end--only he used a three-letter word for it, a word he knew I didn't like. When I asked him not to use that language, he told me he was just quoting Raymond and Larry—both of whom were at the picnic with their wives, by the way.
And did Carl warn those men not to dishonor his wife with their coarse—supposedly "harmless and flattering"--comments? Oh no. In fact, Carl laughed and started talking dirty to me himself. "It's time to overcome your bourgeois sensitivities about the allure of tits and ass" was exactly what he told me. That was the start of this campaign of his to make me "appreciate" myself "through a dude's eyes."
To his credit, Carl didn't use dirty language in front of our daughters. And he would stop if I really got upset when he used words like T and A, but he kept telling me that no matter how conservatively I dressed, I still was the sexiest-looking woman he knew. "I would like you to be thrilled when you see some stranger admiring you," he said. "It's about time for you to love the fact that men automatically salivate when they admire the hot curves of your body."
Eventually I got so tired of Carl's dirty talk that I told my friend and tennis partner Marge how uncomfortable I was with my husband's comments. If I hoped she would give me some hints on how to shut him up, I was disappointed. "Face it, sweetie: deep down inside, all men are pigs," she said. "I found that out driving a cab in college. If I had been willing to go along with the propositions from half of my male customers, I could have owned my own cab company by now. Carl is right, Melanie; you should relax and let yourself be flattered that he thinks of you as his own Penthouse centerfold. Has he told you he would like to watch you have sex with another man?"
"Oh my God, no. Is that next?"
"Wouldn't be surprised. A lot of men have those fantasies."
I didn't ask how she knew that. If she meant her own husband, I didn't want to hear. "How can you say that so casually, Marge?" I asked her. "We go to the same church, remember? Whatever happened to believing that your body is your temple?"
"Yeah, well," she answered, "just be grateful that you're not the one who needs to lose ten pounds to get back her hot-looking temple."
That was not what I wanted to hear. I felt so betrayed by Marge that I found myself skipping several of our tennis dates. And my relationship with Carl seemed wounded in a scary way that I couldn't pin down. We both knew something was missing. I tried filling that void by volunteering to chair the church picnic committee.
Our new pastor Phil was our former choir leader. Phil insisted on serving as an ordinary worker on the picnic committee because he said he had a conviction that pastoring meant more than "preaching at the congregation." Apparently he got that message across, because I found plenty of other women, but not Marge, showing up for that year's first meeting of the committee. When young athletic-looking Pastor Phil also volunteered to be the first target to get wet in the dunk tank we always rent for our picnics, I was the only one who didn't clap and cheer. He obviously made it his job to notice my glum demeanor, because he came up to me at the end of the meeting. "Is there something weighing on your spirit, Melanie?" he asked. "If so, I'm here to listen." And perhaps give me some useful counsel? I followed him into his office and sat down.
"Now tell me what's upsetting you," he said.
That was not exactly easy to do. I felt humiliated at the thought of telling our pastor, a man ten years younger than my own husband, the perverted things Carl had been saying to me. But I managed to stammer out that I wished my husband could simply appreciate that I keep my body in healthy shape.
"He doesn't give you that praise?"
"No, he does. In his way, I suppose. But..."
"Not often enough? Not convincingly?"
I blurted out what Carl had told me the two guys said at the last church picnic, and what Marge had said about all men being pigs. "Is she right about that?" I asked.
"Pigs? No," Phil replied with a quick laugh. "At least I hope I can say we're not."
But in the silence that followed, the notion hovered between us of all men being sex-crazed. Including Carl. Including Phil himself.
