Upon removing every last pumpkin from our windows and packing up our Halloween décor, I came across a most disturbing sight.
Wesley the Butler was sporting squash.
Had anyone else in normal circumstances found his seasonal prop endowed with male genitalia crafted from farm fresh produce, he’d probably mumble something about those damned neighborhood kids under his breath and carry on with his day. But as for me, only one thought came to mind: I really need to talk to Doug about his behavior. Had our mailman come to our door with a package, he’d think this a household of freaks.
The sad thing is, he’d be right. At least, about my husband.
You see, after the initial hormone-charged sex craze of the typical high schooler subsides, most men stop with the juvenile pranks, the innuendoes, the obscenities scribbled on bathroom walls. Twenty-plus years later, as far as Doug goes, it’s still going on full throttle. Let me rephrase that. He’s still doing it. And by that I mean, he’s being really immature.
In any given room of the house, there’s evidence of it. Two mermaids positioned in ’69 on the edge of the bathtub. Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head in another compromising position in the toy room. In the kitchen, magnetic words on the refrigerator arranged in the most suggestive phrases.
“You need to stop,” I cautioned. “The kids are going to start figuring out what all this stuff means. Both Tyler and Eva can read every word of that, and Anna already knows her phonics. Our children will be damaged goods!”
“What’s that?” he asked. “You want me to show you my goods?”
It goes on nonstop. Consider the following conversations:
I think we should renew our wedding vows. We could have a nice, private ceremony.”
“Why don’t we just have a ceremony of our privates?”
As I presented Anna, dubbed, to her inevitable dismay, “Anna Banana,” who was all gussied up for her first day of preschool:
Have you inspected the Banana?”
“Have you inspected MY banana?”
I’m throwing out all our Vaseline. Come to find out, petroleum jelly has actual petroleum in it–the same stuff they put in gasoline! And it gets absorbed directly into the bloodstream. Did you know the skin is the human body’s biggest organ?”
“Apparently you’ve never looked down my pants.”
In retrospect, I probably set myself up for that one.
After more than a decade of practice, I’m able to predict his response and edit myself, but not always before it’s too late. Like this week, during the usual 5:00 pre-dinner scramble: “Dammit! I forgot to thaw something out. Can you pull some meat out of the—(he smirks)—YOU KNOW WHAT? FORGET IT.”
I used to think if someone else caught him in all his inappropriateness, he’d stop. Like back in the days of Ashley, our domestic nanny. She was a twenty-something, tattooed, tongue-pierced liberal kind of girl who couldn’t be shocked by much of anything.
There came a day that I sent her to the grocery store with a very elaborate list—including aisle numbers, name brands, package sizes (shut up, inner Doug voice)—and when she returned, she was quieter than usual with a somewhat disturbed look on her face. On the table I glimpsed her receipt and my list, which I discovered to be even more elaborate than I’d left it.
“I’m sorry,” was the start of my feeble explanation. “I assure you, I am not the one who drew phallic diagrams next to all the produce.”
In all honesty, it wasn’t just produce. It’s amazing how much stuff at the grocery store can be portrayed in the form of miniature, animated testicles.
I myself have become accustomed to it. I am a list-maker, and hardly a day passes that I don’t find a suggestion or two sketched in the margins of my “Things to Do” lists, which are carelessly strewn around the house. But as for our nanny, it’s possible she’s scarred for life.
Yesterday I attempted schedule a doctor’s appointment. But for that particular date, there was no room to write it—because Doug had already penciled in an engagement of his own: “Party in Doug’s pants. Early bird gets the worm!”
“ENOUGH!” I flung my pen across the kitchen, while a confused receptionist listened on. “You just wrote my next blog post, my friend. I am exposing you and all your childish antics once and for all!”
“Maybe after that I can expose myself,” he said.
I stared.
“And then, maybe you can expose yourself.”
Cold silence.
“Maybe we can expose each other up.”
“Are you done?”
“You’re the one who can’t stop talking about expositions and what not.”
(Long, exasperated sigh.) “Do you mean, ‘exposés’?”
“Stop calling me Jose.”
“What are you talking about?
“What are YOU talking about?”
This would go on all day if I’d allow it.
Despite how infuriating he can be, it occurred to me, no matter what lengths—let me rephrase that—no matter how hard, or shall I say, persistently, I try, my husband will never grow up. And if he outlives me, it’ll go on long after he’s in a nursing home with young, pretty nurses emptying his bedpans.
And years after our demise, they will tear down our house and find, etched in its very foundation, beneath the layers of wall and sheetrock, a band of smiling and waving genitalia. To this day, the construction crew still thinks I did it.
When I’d hoped to someday leave behind a legacy in print, this was not what I had in mind.
By this point, most women would be at their wits’ end, but the way I see it, life is too short to stay annoyed. In any marriage, both parties learn to live with things they once deemed impossible. A few of the many tricks to staying married is recognizing your own imperfections, celebrating the positives and tolerating the intolerable. At the end of the day, he keeps me amused–and so I laugh at his antics, appreciate the youthful side of his nature, remind myself to loosen up and have myself a ball. Maybe even two.
Oh, like you didn’t see that coming.