Francis Levy - Erotomania - A Romance

I was still attending my meetings regularly, but in many ways we had become the average American couple. After all, Monica wasn't the only one on our block with obesity problems, and I was no exception when it came to compulsive exercise. You have people who jog and lift weights at all times of the day and night, and you have people in the same family whose hands are in the cookie jar at the same hour.

This polarity was becoming more obvious in our relationship every day. Monica had developed a love for ice cream, which she bought in gallon cartons and ate while watching any program except "Oprah." Considering that Oprah was battling the same weight problems that Monica was facing, it was easy to see why. And I had acquired a new piece of gym equipment that bore a striking resemblance to the rack, the popular medieval torture device. Like a lot of couples, Monica and I perfectly complemented each other. I represented control and she excess. I provided limits and she loosened me up. There was even a "Montel Williams" devoted to this very subject. You displace onto your partner those traits you don't want to deal with yourself.

The one thing we took from General Shapiro was an interest in cultural events and civic affairs. When he told us there were other things in life that a couple could enjoy together besides sex, it was a real eye opener. Now that Monica was no longer losing control of herself in front of abstract expressionist art, she began to see it in a new light. I thought she might end up disenchanted, thinking that abstract expressionism was meaningless scribble and that painters like Pollock had pulled one over on the public, but instead of being disaffected she became interested in the work of Pollock's wife, Lee Krasner, and other female abstractionists like Helen Frankenthaler. Once we had attracted a great deal of attention in museums and restaurants because we couldn't keep our hands off each other; now we were getting sideways glances because of the disparity in our appearances. I was even approached by someone from a group called Fat and Free who wanted to use us as Couple of the Month in their newsletter. And then there were the embarrassing incidents. We never became an object of curiosity the way we were when Monica insisted on having sex in public, but from a practical point of view, Monica didn't fit in certain spaces. For instance, when we tried to eat in a Fifties-style diner that had opened in town, Monica was unable to squeeze into a booth. Rather than feel ashamed, it was at times like this that my heart went out to her and I felt a love and pride in her that I never felt in all our passionate groping. I've always been interested in helping the underdog and I'll support the guy or gal who tries to fulfill his dreams even when the cards are stacked against them-even if the dream is nothing greater than trying to get too much to eat. There was something heroic about Monica trying to prevail in all her obsessions, whether they were sex or art or food.

We did have a last fling, one moment of total debauchery. Like the Proustian Madeleine, it was ignited by the olfactory memory of a thing. In our case, it was a restaurant rather than a pastry We had been driving home after seeing a production of The Marriage of Figaro, which was put on by the local opera society, and we passed The Golden Cock. Monica felt for my prick, which was stiff for the first time in months, and before I knew it she had her face in my crotch. I remembered how talented Monica had been in giving blowjobs, how her mouth seemed to have an almost unlimited capacity for sucking. She was a magician in making large objects disappear into relatively small spaces. But suddenly I noticed a change. Eating has always been the slang for fellatio. As The Golden Cock's neon sign disappeared into my rearview mirror, Monica seemed to be literally eating me. The blowjob was turning into another meal. She licked my cock as if it were a lolly and took my balls into her mouth, running her tongue up and down the sides of my scrotum as if she were wiping gravy off of a plate. If I'd had a piece of baguette on me, I would have offered it to her. Then, as we stopped at a red light and I came, she greedily swallowed my cum as if she were drinking a milk shake.

The moment we got back to the house, the television went on as if nothing had happened. Monica was splayed out on the sofa and I was pedaling furiously on the bike. We'd gotten home just in time for "Sixty Minutes II," which Monica claimed to prefer to "Sixty Minutes." Monica's legs were covered with broken blood vessels and her thighs and ass were thickened with cellulite. She wore dark orthopedic stockings that she rolled up above her knees. Yet I still felt pangs, having tasted the old life (to be precise it was Monica who'd done the actual tasting). Our encounters had been like the seismic shifts of an earthquake that leave a path of open cracks begging to be filled. I wanted her. I jumped off the bike, edged into the little space left on the couch next to her, and threw my arms around her. Monica looked at me as if 1 were crazy. "You're sweaty" was the only thing she said.

Whenever I'm upset, I've learned to go down for twenty, which in work-out lingo means twenty pushups. In this case, 1 did twenty pushups, fifty jack knives (because you need to strengthen your central core at times of emotional turmoil), and another twenty pushups on my knuckles with my fists together, which is an excellent way to strengthen the triceps-a muscle that had fallen into disuse since we'd stopped fucking. 1 wanted to say to Monica get off the couch, shake it up, do some lunges, do some squats. 1 wanted to pass on what I'd learned, but it was too late. Monica had a hard enough time getting up off the couch when she took one of her infrequent breaks from eating and watching television. Even if she could have joined me, I wouldn't have been totally free to enjoy it because of the emissions of gas that came out of her both before and after arising and the horrendous odors that emanated from her when she attempted to move her body. When she got up, she sounded like a car whose distributor cap was broken. There was a little sputtering, like minor sniper fire, followed by an explosion that was remarkably similar to the blast from a twelve-gauge shotgun.

But things had never been perfect, had they? As someone in the program once put it, there's always a fly in the ointment. From the day 1 first laid eyes on Monica-an event which didn't occur until quite a while after we'd begun sexual relations-1 didn't remember a time when I hadn't felt something was missing. What 1 had learnt was that having a relationship requires give and take. Sometimes this giving and taking involved the basics of everyday life. I gave Monica the Swanson's Boneless White Meat Fried Chicken Hungry-Man after I pulled it piping hot from the microwave, and she took it. This giving and taking could involve even simpler activities. In the morning when Monica was finally able to pull herself out of bed after a long night of eating and television-watching, she'd belch, let out couple of loud farts, and then call out from the bathroom, "Where's the toothpaste?" She never remembered where the toothpaste was and 1 often found myself welling up with anger. I felt put upon. Wly do I have to constantly tell her where the toothpaste is? Why do I have to do everything? Then a calm came over me when I realized that the joy of a relationship came from being able to give unconditionally. 1 profited in the act of giving. 1 was not always able to calculate my reward-especially when I saw Monica glued to the television set with the discarded box from a twelvepack of Dunkin Donuts sitting by her side-yet, nevertheless, I felt assured it would come. Part of having faith, I'd learned after all the months of recovery, had to do with realizing that though you may not be getting what you want, you are ending up with what you need.