The Dating Bender Page 2

  Ever efficient, I got him to roll onto what was supposed to be our romantic sex blanket. The flimsy, gauzy nature of the periwinkle fabric matched the shabby state of our union.

  My barely ample frame struggled for the next hour as I dragged him up and over three sand dunes that were no longer beautiful to me. My father’s sweating-it-to-the-oldies weight-lifting regime had built my endurance at least. It was also helpful that Sheldon wasn’t the six-foot three stallion I had fantasized about marrying.

  We finally made it to the side of the road. A sweet older coupled picked us up and offered us a ride to the hospital. We got into the truck despite the cow poop stink.

  “It’s okay, dear. Sometimes the pressure around anniversaries is counterproductive,” the woman said from the passenger side through the peewee back window. “Herb and I had a disastrous first anniversary, but we’ve been together for fifty years!”

  An adorable sentiment, but it did nothing to squelch my annoyance. I missed the days when Sheldon used to tell me he loved me before every meal and sexual encounter. Apparently, our anniversary didn’t warrant a romantic reprise.

  We spent seven hours in the emergency room where Sheldon cussed out two nurses, one doctor, and a small child, ending his diatribe by demanding service over the receptionist’s loud speaker. After we escaped that torture, we filled our time being miserable in our four hundred dollars-a-night B&B cabin. I lied and told Sheldon I’d talked them down to one hundred and fifty bucks to get him to take the trip. My reward: he allowed me to dote on his wounded foot, which lulled at least one of us to sleep.

  For our final evening, I rallied and led a toast to commemorate our nuptials over squashed year-old cake and flat champagne. I mustered the courage to seduce Sheldon by doing my version of a sexy dance. I felt like a jackass flailing my arms and caressing my non-curvaceous body. Cosmo’s seduction boot camp blows.

  The bubbly emboldened me to lean down and pleasure Sheldon orally. As I sunk into his business, a feeling of nausea washed over me. I vomited all over his less-than-ample apparatus. It was hard to tell by his expression if he was horrified, turned on, or irked that I woke him.

  Year-old cake did not keep as well as all the bridal magazines led me to believe; or maybe it was my semi-erotic dance moves.

  Sheldon left me alone on the couch of our sexless cabana. My weekend role as nursemaid to his foot was not reciprocated when it came to tending to my food poisoning.

  I recuperated enough overnight to pack up our stuff as a thunderstorm boomed outside. The weather seemed fitting, considering the turbulent state of our relationship. New York could be dreary when it wanted to be, a talent Sheldon had mastered during our first year of marriage. How could I have been delusional enough to believe that a vacation in the Hamptons might melt away our problems?

  ***

  Before ending the mess of a weekend, we stopped at my brother’s house in Westchester for a visit. Jimmy and his wife Jackie were living my parents’ quintessential version of life: three children, a mansion in the suburbs, and a corporate job as an investment banker where Jimmy “provided for his family,” as my mother often put it. This was her passive-aggressive way of noting that Sheldon was not doing the same. Finally, a point my mother and I could agree on.

  They were an attractive bunch. Jackie made soccer mom status look hip. On the outside my brother looked like every other investment banker on Wall Street, but on the weekends he morphed into someone who could easily fit within a J. Crew catalog. My three nieces did their part by looking far cuter than any Gap Kids model ever could. They represented the functional side of my family.

  Upon arrival, I unloaded all of our crap onto the cavernous back porch because Sheldon’s foot still hadn’t mended. I darted around the house looking for Jackie.

  Sheldon blocked me.

  “Babe, can you get me some ice for my foot? It’s still aching,” he said, looking more pathetic than usual as he settled into the living room. I willed myself to love him more than I felt in the moment. It wasn’t his fault family visits were stressful.

  “Yes, give me a minute.”

  I scrambled around the house, room by room, until I found my sister-in-law in the third-floor playroom amid a Barbie condo complex.

  “Hey there, great to see you! But if I don’t get away from Sheldon, I may kill him,” I said.

  “What happened to you? You look hellacious,” Jackie said. She suffered from her own form of Tourette’s syndrome: the brutally honest variety.

  “Well, we missed our bus, went to the beach, and spent the better part of the weekend in the ER. Oh, and I attempted to pleasure Sheldon. Let’s just say I’ll never have to do that again. Can we please get out of here?”

  “Retail therapy it is,” she said as she squeezed my cheeks together like a mother would do to her child. She gave me that pitiful look that happily married people often give to their not nearly as happy counterparts.

  I tore down three flights of spiral stairs and tripped over my niece’s Barbie doll before reaching the restaurant-caliber kitchen. Once I figured out how to work the ice machine, I bagged a bundle and slid it down the hallway to Sheldon.

  “Bye, honey, be back soon,” I said, already halfway out the door.

  As I waited and sunk into the buttercream soft leather seats of Jackie’s Jag, my marital woes slipped into the distance, as did my annoyance with Sheldon. He was a wonderful man. I just brought out the worst in him.

  Thirty shopping minutes later, I found more solace in a hip pair of pink satin high-heeled sneakers. It was true what they said about shopping. The shoes managed to do what Sheldon hadn’t for the duration of our trip and marital life together; they made me happy. He had tried. Just not hard enough.

  I popped them on my feet, and every time I glanced down, I got a kick out of myself.

  “I’ve still got it, right, Jackie?”

  “You’ve got something all right, though I’m not sure what, but the sneaks are cute. This has been fun, but I have to get back to the kids.”

  I wondered which kids she was talking about: hers or my husband masquerading as a child.

  “Sure, I guess you’re right. Let me pay for these.”

  Trying to prolong our return home, I dallied at the register. The purse sale rack stood next to the checkout line, which gave me another opportunity to stall. I picked through every pocket of every bag on the table until Jackie glared at me and shooed me out of the shop.

  Despite the forced departure, I was riding on a sneaker high as we pulled into the driveway.

  I ran upstairs to the guest room and swapped my dingy sweats for a sexy nightie. Then I plucked my new pink sneakers out of their box and put them on, completing my seductive yet quirky outfit. I tried to plump up my barely-there breasts by stuffing them into a push-up bra, just like Glamour magazine had instructed. I looked into the full-length mirror hanging from the door and determined that my enhanced bust looked goofy given my petite frame, so I set my boobies free, convinced the shoes would suffice.

  I walked into the den where Sheldon sat watching sports with his foot still propped up on a pillow.

  “So, Pooh Bear, what do you think, hot and sassy, huh?”

  “Sam, after all the money we blew on our anniversary, please tell me you didn’t throw our money away on a frivolous impulse purchase. I’m in enough pain.”

  Instead of having hot pink sneaker make-up sex, I received the cold shoulder for the rest of the night. Gone were the evenings of nude backrubs and cherry Coke floats shared through a single straw.

  At breakfast, always one to stir the pot, Jackie said, “Slinky sneaks Sam bought, don’t you think, Shel?”

  He glared at her, then me.

  “Sam, I am not amused. Something has to shift with our finances,” he said.

  Perhaps a real job on his part might be a start.

  Jackie eyed him with disdain, and directed me to the back porch with a less-than-subtle hair flip.

  “Who is he k
idding? You never buy anything, and he’s going to give you shit about a twenty-five-dollar pair of shoes? If I were you, I would get out of the marriage based on that alone, not to mention all of his other inadequacies as a man. You do realize that trying to marry yourself out of your family was a bad idea, don’t you?”

  Please. That was not what I was doing. Jackie could benefit from a session with Oprah on the art of being tactful. “Sheldon has always been tight with our money. That’s hardly a reason to leave someone. And as my mother and the church always say, ‘Divorce is not the answer!’” Maybe living unhappily ever after is.

  I used the phrase “our money” loosely, since his company was tanking so our money translated into my money—not that anybody but Sheldon was counting.

  People didn’t give up on a marriage based on tightwad tendencies, or, at least, not this someone. What I did need to figure out was how to make the most of our disintegrating relationship. Maybe I could conjure images of our early days of high romance when he used to make me laugh. Like when he did his Lady Gaga impersonation.

  When Jackie finished her tough love sermon, I fled to my nieces’ tree house, where I spent the rest of the afternoon hiding out and reminding myself how happily married I was supposed to be. I also prayed to God for some direction on how to make that fantasy a reality.

  The Big Guy did not hear me.

  Indulging in another familial-bred tendency, I poured myself a bourbon from the stash I’d pilfered earlier from the liquor cabinet and drank it in one smooth swig. I unlaced my fabulous sneakers, climbed out of the tree house, crept barefoot to the trash can, and chucked them.

  Then I walked over to the outdoor mini bar, grabbed some vodka, and sat on the patio steps. Becoming “one” with my drink, I gazed out into the starry abyss of a picture-perfect backyard that was so far from my life it could have been Pluto. The booze was not as comforting as I’d hoped.

  Sitting there, looking to the sky or God or anybody who would listen, I muttered, “’Til death do us part, huh?”

  Chapter Three

  I tried to enjoy some much-needed alone time in our quaint sun room. The space oozed with color. Blazing yellow walls and pink trim; my attempt at painting myself happy. It didn’t work. I blamed Sheldon because he refused to use air conditioning unless temperatures rose to ninety-eight degrees. Our Spanish-style hacienda trapped the heat like a sweatbox. Why in the hell we ever moved to St. Petersburg, Florida, I would never know. Oh, that’s right—to escape my family.

  Sheldon interrupted my relaxation when he clunked in and blocked my rays as he hovered behind me.

  “Cubby Bear, I was presented with an opportunity to live out my life-long security dream, and I’m going to take it,” he said.

  “Oh, you mean you bought me that cute little Redskinette cheerleading outfit, and you want to order me around in it?” I snorted.

  He repositioned himself, throwing his weight, which included the extra fifteen pounds he had packed on since the honeymoon.

  “Sam, I’m being serious. Paul was offered the opportunity to run security at the Super Bowl, and he put me second-in-command. It’s a killer job. This is my chance to take my ideas about security crowd management global.”

  Global, who was he kidding? It wasn’t like he was helping to mitigate terrorism.

  “Wow, Pooh Bear, that sounds amazing. I need to get through the push at work and then maybe we can talk about it.”

  “Well, it can’t wait. We have to get packed for Atlanta. It’s a long-term contract, serious business. I promised you financial security and this is one step in that direction.”

  “Honey, I can’t just leave my job. Besides, this might be something we should talk through a bit before we go and uproot our lives on a whim.”

  I scratched my nose with one hand and started dusting plants with the other.

  “I didn’t mean we as in you and me. I meant Paul and I need to go,” he said.

  Clearly I missed something, because according to Redbook couples discussed and reached an agreement before acting. Stand up to him, you wimp! Quelling my tendency to curse, I decided to gather more facts before overreacting.

  I moved on to dusting Sheldon’s oversized boob-tube—a high-ticket purchase he made without discussing it with me first.

  “So, when exactly in this scenario would I be coming out, if we were going to consider this? Hypothetically.”

  Sheldon stared at me.

  “Sam, this is a huge chance for me, your basic no-brainer. I need to be there. Someone needs to stay back here and man the fort.”

  Man the fort? WTF? A year into our marriage I’m supposed to stay home and “man” a ridiculous fort while my husband jets off to Atlanta with his Peter-Pan-complex-of-a-business-partner for the next year?

  Especially annoying given that just last month I begged him to let me consider a job that my mentor, Babs, had offered me. She was helping to launch a start-up that was poised to become the next generation of social networking, and she’d needed my help in Colorado.

  He completely blew me off. He might have even said he needed to stew on it. He couldn’t possibly be this thick.

  I breathed in deeply, holding the exhale just like Self magazine advised to temper anger. It didn’t work.

  “Honey, you can’t go off and make a unilateral decision about our life without me. Are you really not aware of the protocol in these situations?” I said.

  Sheldon disliked Babs and her work ethic. He mistrusted her because, according to him, she was a has-been by-product of the sexual revolution. Her only real problem was that she never realized, with the onset of AIDS and all the other STDs, you weren’t supposed to continue sexing it up randomly anymore. However, for every sexually expressive fiber in her body, Babs had equal amounts of razor-sharp business acumen. It’s fitting that you would seek out a slutty mentor.

  She became infamous for rattling up a business meeting by sliding up onto the conference room table in a micro-mini skirt to capture people’s attention. The fact that she rarely wore underwear only heightened her ability to pull focus.

  “Sheldon, please tell me you weren’t really expecting me to stay back in this cesspool of a panhandle while you gallivant around the country without me.”

  I moved on to cleaning the mini-blinds and positioned my back to him, a power play from Forbes magazine. I peered out the window at our adorable backyard. I endured the sticky hot temps every morning to ensure we had a manicured lawn spotted with pale pink impatiens flowers, all encased in a perfect picket fence of palm trees. Unfortunately, life within the walls of our world was anything but perfect.

  “Babe, I don’t know what the big deal is. You’ll visit me, and when I can, I’ll come back here. You can keep our fort safe while I build the nest egg of our future. It’s all going to work out. I want to take care of you, and this is an excellent opportunity to do that,” he said.

  He could be charming when he wanted to be, but still, it was a moronic idea. No sane person would take this lying down or standing up. If he thought he could just hop off to Atlanta and follow his version of the American Dream without me, then I would do the same damn thing.

  I dropped my dust cloth and ran upstairs to the bathroom to dial Babs as fast as my fingers could fly.

  “It’s Sam. You know that job offer you’ve been dangling? I’m in. When do you need me in Colorado?”

  ***

  “Mom, I told you. Sheldon and I are not getting a divorce. Everything is fine. Our careers are temporarily leading us to work in different states. That’s it. We plan to visit each other religiously, I promise. I’m going to get back to God too, like you suggested.”

  “Don’t you dare disrespect me in an effort to hide the fact that you are making another poor lifestyle choice,” she said. “It’s bad enough you married him, but to live apart so you can each chase your pipe dreams is ridiculous, even for you.”

  I contemplated hanging up on her. Instead, I sipped more Pinot Grigio. Or “p
en-wa-grego,” as my mother often mispronounced it.

  “Mom, seriously, social networking is not a fad. Remember Shelly? She just got engaged to a guy she met on Facebook.”

  “Well, your cousin has always been gullible, even more than you, which is hard to believe. What are they going to do, live together in sin on this Facetime thing?”

  “It’s Facebook, Mom. Seriously, this is a great opportunity.”

  “You really do live in a dream world. What you do with your life is your own business, but a divorce would be roadkill for our position in the church,” she said. “I know you’ve always been a quitter, but ditching a marriage is taking it to an extreme I could never forgive. P.S., I love you. When you’re not doing stupid things.”

  Click.

  A part of me wanted to call her back and scream get off my back you unsupportive SOB of a mother, but instead I sipped more wine and breathed deeply. Oprah suggested using each passing day as an opportunity to practice patience.

  I rationalized that, at the end of a three-month trial period, we would measure the success of each of our ventures. Depending on which job proved more lucrative, the other partner would gracefully bail out of his or her career and move to offer love and support to their spouse. That’s what married people did. Or so you’d think.

  Unfortunately, our families were not quite as placated by our plan as Sheldon was. Their response to the decision was fashioned after my Dad’s favorite Sinatra song, “Send in the Clowns,” but in my parents’ rendition they sent in the priest.

  Why did all Catholics think bringing a man of God into a relationship was a good thing? Did it really make sense to seek lifestyle advice from someone who had spent the better part of his life hiding out in a church, and according to some, fondling little boys? I’d tried to accept that consulting a priest was standard practice for my people, who preferred to pray for a better outcome instead of dealing with reality.

  Sheldon’s family took the decision much better than mine. They seemed to see the brighter side of things. It was a shame they didn’t school their son on the art of marital decision-making.