Tim Sandlin - Social Blunders

I blinked twice. “Am I supposed to?”

“My husband doesn’t love me.” Her voice was fragile. “My son doesn’t love me. You’d think at the very least, my lover would love me.”

I didn’t know what to say. Maybe it’s because of the early years with Lydia and Maurey, but I’ve always saved love for family and friends. Lovers were something different.

Katrina’s hands twitched in her lap as she whispered. “Nobody loves me.”

I wanted to deny that, but when it came time to say what she needed to hear, I failed.

“Katrina, you threatened me with repercussions if I refused you sex. It’s hard to love someone who holds you with threats.”

“I love Skip.”

I sat down. “Jesus.”

She said, “Christ.”

Wanda telephoned.

“You have a beautiful voice, Wanda.”

“Where’s the money I was promised?”

“Have you thought long and hard about coming home? I want you to consider saving our marriage as an option.”

“You’ve broken every promise you ever made me. I don’t know why I dreamed this time would be any different.”

“I haven’t broken every promise.”

“Name one.”

“I was nice to your mother.”

“Mom thinks you’re a sleazy bastard.”

“I was monogamous, like the vows said we both should be.”

“Go ahead, rub my face in it.”

“Most women like a man who’s monogamous.”

“Sam, you are lousy in bed.”

“Let’s shoot for a second opinion.”

“No wonder you’re obsessed with your tongue. It’s bigger than your dick.”

“No one’s ever complained.”

“Your daughter is a slut.”

I was silent awhile, thinking. “Wanda, I changed my mind. I don’t want you to come back after all.”

“Sensitive, aren’t we?”

“Have a nice day.”

I hung up.

When the phone rang, I was standing crucified halfway up the climbing wall. I’d positioned a two-inch lip to stand on and Katrina had strapped each outstretched arm to pitons wedged into plaster artificial cracks. Back to the wall, literally and metaphorically, my major fear was falling off the lip and ripping out both shoulder sockets.

What happened was I had made the mistake of using the old “I’ll bet you have fantasies you’ve never told anyone” line. Katrina’s fantasies are considerably more complicated than your average woman’s fantasies—nothing as tame as lick-the-anchovy on a merry-go-round.

According to Katrina, all her life—from puberty anyway, which to hear her tell it came at six—she had dreamed of decking herself out in a cheerleader uniform and dancing for Jesus on the Cross. Don’t ask me; I think it had something to do with being raised Catholic. All those years of kneeling before a nearly nude longhair twisted her sense of desire. She said each night after she said her prayers and before she went to sleep, she would reach up and touch the man hanging over her and wish he were real.

Saturday afternoon after my household had left for the day, Katrina showed up in the Page High red sweater and white pleated skirt and her hair in pigtails. She did warm-up cheers while I hung naked on the wall.

Then she jumped high, squealed, and came down in splits. Twenty-five years out of high school, yet the woman had the flexibility of a teenage gymnast. She hung a pom-pom on my penis and pranced around the room, doing kicks over her head and shouting “Go, team!”

Playing Jesus was okay; I’d always had a crucifixion complex. Also, I was exactly the same age as Christ when they nailed him.

What I didn’t like was hanging from a climbing wall with a pom-pom on my dick. I’d never even climbed the climbing wall, which was actually a bunch of Matolius Simulators bolted to oak. I only bought it for Shannon because a few years ago she decided she had to go out to Wyoming and climb the Grand Teton. That summer, she did—zipped right up the sucker. She came home all jazzed for rock climbing, but by Christmas she was into mountain biking and had abandoned the climbing wall, never to touch it again. I’d forgotten we even owned the thing until Katrina realized the possibilities of suspending Jesus six feet off the floor.

So, the phone rang and Katrina brought it over on the long cord, and she stood on top of a Nautilus bench press bench to prop the phone between my shoulder and ear.

“Cowboy, your life is about to take a turn for the worse.”

“Is this Skippy?”

Katrina dropped down a couple steps and commenced to suck.

“I recently purchased a seven-millimeter Mauser with your name etched on the stock.”

“Skip, I fail to see why you are angry with me.”

“Consider this a last warning.”

“I’ve never done anything to you.” I looked down at the part in Katrina’s hair. Her scalp was a concrete-colored furrow aimed at my belly. She was working amazingly hard, for a married woman.

“Tomorrow your S is going to hit my F .”

I’ve always had mixed feelings about the blow job. It feels terrific, but over the years men have taken a superior attitude toward women who give oral pleasure. Appreciation gives way to power, which leads to the cocksucker charge.

“What exactly do you want me to do?” I asked.

“Buy time on every radio station in town.”

“Ouch, not so rough.”

“Go on the air and announce you are an illegitimate bastard with no notion of paternal lineage. Hell, say the whore gave virgin birth if you want, just put a stop to rumors of my involvement.”

“I haven’t heard any rumors of your involvement.”

“I’m faced with snickering at the club. Even my wife has started to doubt my innocence.”

Skip’s wife switched her attention from the head to the ball sac.

“You should have thought of that thirty-four years ago.”

“Last warning, hear. Tomorrow, your name is mud.”

After Skip hung up I couldn’t lift my head and release the phone for fear of cold-cocking Katrina. I simply hung there with a twisted neck while she mangled my privates.

When Katrina came up for air, she asked, “What’d Skipper want?”

“The usual.”

“Let’s trade places.”

That’s when Gus walked in.

“You got that nice Gilia girl fooled into thinking you’re all right. Why you want to go sticking your pork where it don’t belong?”

Gus was baking pumpkin pies—dozens of pumpkin pies. She’d taken one look at me spread-eagle on the wall and marched straight into the kitchen where she banged pans together until Katrina gathered up her pom-poms and went home.

I stuck my finger into a cooling pie. Gus swatted at me. “That’s not for you.”

“Twenty-five pies and I don’t get a bite?”

“You don’t deserve a bite. Get out of my way.”

“She asked me to do it.”

All my women can be fierce when they decide I’m stupid, but Gus can look bigger and meaner than any of them. “Ever’ time a woman ask you to do something, you have to do it?”

“I can’t very well say no.”

“What you can’t do is pork any woman that lets you pork her.”

“Why not?”

“God damn , you’re a fool.” Gus stalked to the oven, thrust her hands into mitts, and began shuttling pies in and out.

Throughout adulthood, I have been promiscuous as hell when I’m single and monogamous as hell when I’m not single. No exceptions; no compromises. Should Gilia and I ever formalize the connection, I would be true and blue for however long we stuck together, right up to death do us part. But in the meantime, according to my take on right and wrong, it was perfectly fair to relax with Katrina. I was in the right.