Stephen Dixon - Frog

Now he’s back with the woman whose wedding reception it was. Gail. She’s divorced, has a child. He got a Christmas card from her nine years after her wedding reception and wrote back saying what had happened to him since then. “You might remember the woman I came with, but I doubt you’d remember much on such an exciting day. Much that wasn’t connected to you, I mean.” She’d sent him a Christmas card the two Christmases after she got married. He sent her a card back for the first one but doesn’t think he got around to answering the second. Must have been just after Olivia was born, so too busy to, or just didn’t see the point. Then he stopped hearing from her. From the Rerkovskys he’d learned she moved to Rome with her husband, and soon after that he and Denise left New York and lost touch with the Rerkovskys. It was the Rerkovskys, she said, who told her what school he got a job at years ago, which is where she sent the card, hoping he was still there or it’d be forwarded. She called him a few months later saying she’d be attending a conference in his city and would he care to come by her hotel for a drink. Did. They met downstairs, drank in the bar. He called the sitter to see if she’d stay another two hours, they had a quick dinner in the hotel cafe, went to her room for beers, made love. They corresponded and called after that, visited each other, she wondered why she hadn’t found him this attractive back then. “I think I would have asked you to marry if I had. Maybe fatherhood and having been married and holding a responsible job and security and all you went through with your wife’s illness have toned you down a ways. You were often a lot too argumentative and unsociable and crazy to me then. Even your sex was a bit too flaky, picking me up with you stuck in me and pinning me against the wall and sometimes banging me against it till you came. That hurt. Who cared if you got lost in it — I used to get bruises on my ass and back. It used to piss me off, if you remember, since you continued trying to do it even after I told you how I felt.” “I’d probably still be doing it if I wasn’t ten years older and no doubt somewhat weaker. Last time I tried it with Denise was a couple of years ago — she was a little heftier than you, and she never complained when I did it — and I could barely pick her up. I think I even fell. Anyway, something for you to thank the aging process for.” “Even your foreplay action has changed. You used to rub my cunt too softly and kiss it too hard and I could never get you to switch those two.” “That was your and Denise’s doing. I figured that after the two of you had said it, and also some vague remembrances of other women saying something like it in the past, I had to be doing something wrong. Didn’t make me feel that good either, realizing my technique there had been off some thirty years, even if some women might not have been aware it was, but I’m probably wrong there too.”

He told her he found her much more attractive now too. He’d always found her attractive, face and body, with legs and a rear end that gave him a hard-on almost every time he looked at them, but he could never love her. As he did Denise. And other women before Denise. Certain things about her. She annoyed him at times, though he didn’t say so. Things she did and said. She was educated but not in areas he found interesting. She read stupid books, wanted to see what he knew would be banal movies and plays. She too frequently watched moronic TV. She was too showy in appearance. She barely tolerated the music he liked and hated it when he had it on in the car. “It’s depressing, funereal, old.” Her voice was often fake. There was something unnatural about her in lots of ways. Too much time in front of the mirror, inspecting herself, clothes, trying out faces, poses. Sometimes he caught her. And that it didn’t embarrass her when he did. Hair, which she seemed to change the style of every other month, and nose, which she was seriously thinking of getting bobbed and pugged. He’d never touch it, he told her, if she did get it fixed. But he was lonely for close adult company and inherently horny it seemed and depressed when he did it to himself. There’d been two women for short periods before her and both he showed minimal interest in and they dropped him abruptly. Their sex was good. She got him started even when he thought he wouldn’t feel like it, and let him do it whichever way and whenever he wanted to, even when she was sleeping, except for picking her up. She was smart and well respected in her field, perceptive about other people, had a few bright congenial friends. She was a good mother and daughter and warm and attentive to his girls. And generous with money — and made lots of it and stood to inherit a bundle, which didn’t influence him and he’d in fact always got along better with much poorer women. Thought of interesting things to do with the girls and them, got him away from his work, was lively, sometimes funny, energetic. Great cook, kept a clean house, did his taxes better than he, went out of her way to aid disabled people across the street, and other things. So one day he says “Hey listen, what’re we fooling around for — why don’t we get married?” She says “Only if you’re absolutely sure you want to. Occasionally I don’t feel you really love me.” “I do. I want to marry you. Both very much. Only, promise not to get a nose job. We’ll write it into our marriage contract. I don’t know what I can agree to to meet it. Certainly nothing about money, since whatever I save has to go to my girls first, and it’ll be chicken feed compared to what you’ll be able to put away. That I’ll keep my sperm count high in case you want another child.” “I won’t. And I can’t promise. I’ve an awful nose. It’s long, droops, and has bumps. Some women look sweet with a drop dripping out of a nostril or hanging off it, but I look gargoylish. What I think of myself is important, so I probably will go through with it in addition to surgery with the chin and around the eyes if I think I need it later on.” “At least, before you let them break your nose and hack away at the cartilage, give me a day to try to talk you out of it.” He wonders if he’ll ever end up loving her, be glad he’s married to her, be able to continue to make love with her, can keep up the pretense for years? He thinks with the sex he can, since he’s able to separate it when he wants to, but doubts he can with the others. So what then? They’ll stay married for a number of years, with luck till around the time his girls might not need her as much or need him, to restrain him sometimes and for his self-control and composure, to have a companion anymore, and also when he might be too indifferent or lost something somehow to care about having a woman around for just company and sex.

They get married. No honeymoon. He doesn’t want to leave his girls so soon after the marriage. Desertion. Gail and her daughter move into his little semi-detached house, she gets a high-paying job in his city, in a few months has the roof reshingled, basement finished, most of the furniture replaced, kitchen recabineted, tiny backyard and front and side grass areas sodded and planted with bulbs and fruit trees, and knows more places to buy things and go to and has made more friends than he and Denise had in years. He tells her he loves her whenever he feels she needs to hear it, but he never means it. Wishes he did though. That he could think about her wistfully during the day, late afternoons long for her to come home, want to jump her before they get into bed, cuddle with her through sleep, dream of making love to her, kiss her lips when he gets out of bed early morning to exercise and run. He still thinks about Denise a lot, as much as he did before he met Gail. Doing day-to-day things. Typing, driving, fluffing a pillow. But also, if he can’t get an erection with Gail and wants to, he’ll think about making love with Denise, especially with him on his knees behind her and one time in particular when the lights were on or it was daylight and she had her rear raised and vulva opened, and usually gets one. Also, if he’s about to come with Gail and she’s close to it or he feels if she does he’ll sleep better because she will or else he wants her to come before he does so he can then, once she’s done, enter her from behind, he’ll think of Denise just after she died or when he opened the coffin the night before the funeral to have a last private look at her and kissed her forehead and wedding band or when she was bedridden and unable to move even a finger or toe. Then his penis will shrink, ejaculation be stalled, and he’ll press their pelvises together and go through the motions and rub her where she likes if he can get his hand there and she’ll usually come and then he’ll urge or turn her over on her hands and knees if she isn’t on them and maybe think of making love with Denise or just Denise nude or just of her vulva if he has to to get an erection and do it in the position, if she moves back and forth at the right time, he likes best.