"A man needed to be able to ejaculate as often as possible in the shortest space of time
to avoid being caught by predators ..."
Barbara & Allan Pease, "Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps"
A strong pair of hands grabbed Fanny's generous hips and pulled her back from the waffle batter. "Who's my buffalo gal?" her husband growled as he bounced his pelvis insistently against the soft, womanly cushions of her bottom. Unexpectedly waylaying and dry-humping his wife -- or, for that matter, any female, or effeminate male underling -- "stallion-style" was a favorite pastime. On weekends and holidays, he might pop up behind her ten-twenty times a day, to the point where Fanny could barely flit anxiously from one room to another without being pinned against the dishwasher, ironing board or home entertainment center.
After twenty-three years of it, she was tired of this once-frolicsome game -- first sprung, to great mutual excitement at the time, during the honeymoon on Ocracoke Island. Now it only fed the fuel of her claustrophobia and increasingly frequent panic attacks. She found herself fantasizing about violent payback, just and joyous retribution. Then her friend, Louise, loaned her a copy of Andrea Dworkin's insightful "Women Are Goddesses From Lesbos, Men Are Pig-Like Thugs from the Tar Pit." And suddenly, the pieces of the puzzle just fell into place. She finally understood: the hair plugs, the goatee, the guns, the gigantic plasma-screen TV, the Harley, the flickerings of abject terror sometimes glimpsed within hubby's glazed eyes.
Uh uh, this was no light-spirited game, tinged with irony or self-deprecation. The male of the species was hardwired this way -- trapped in a flyblown sty of grunting compulsion. Her husband, a respected neoconservative working high within the Pentagon's E-ring had as much free will in the matter as Rufus their Scots Terrier contemplating the grubby, hair-matted couch cushion he regularly mounted in a paroxysm of passion. Ms. Dworkin turned a bright light upon a heretofore dark, squeaking and noisome place. Aha! thought Fanny, as she tiptoed around "Daddy's rec-room" in wonder and sadness, looking at the model trains tootling around their tracks; the chest-popping Britney posters; the plastic, toy soldiers; the beer can and squirrel tail collections; the library of Tom Clancies and Peeping Tom videos. Jeez, even with the light, it was still noisome, though, mercifully, the squeaking had died down.
This dreadful peek-a-boo into the worm farm of her husband's psyche filled Fanny with compassion, guilt and an overwhelming sense of futility. Fanny sincerely wanted to do the right thing, the Christian thing, and so she tried her best to react to his frantic ambuscades with a heifer-like lowing rich in animal gratification, or small, joyful ejaculations of "Whoops-a-daisy!" and "Ride 'em, cowpoke!"
Fortuitously, her husband couldn't see the looks on her face at these moments, which -- belying the chipper enthusiasm of Fanny's exclamations -- suggested the anguished expressions most often found on East Orthodox icons of the crucifixion.
Friend Louise, a peevish feminist, called her a feeble-minded saint, but Fanny was only being a good Republican wife for the king of her castle. A lot of other administration wives would be flattered, if not jubilant, to be dry-humped after so many years of marriage: she could see it in their defeated eyes over girl-talk. Those eyes said that Fanny should stop complaining and start counting her blessings.
"the male African baboon ... mates for between 10 and 20 seconds and gives
just four to eight pelvic thrusts per mating"
Barbara & Allan Pease, "Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps"
"Take it all, you flirty bitch," he hissed into her ear. "How dare you wear your nightie in the daylight hours?" He smacked his lips, barked, and bumped away a few more times.
Per the wifely reckoning, they hadn't had actual physical intercourse since hubba-bubba's last bout with the flu -- when waking up in the middle of the night, half-deranged from a double dose of Extra-Strength Nyquil PM, he had transported her to a sweaty, fantastical pleasure dome for three and a half deliriously delicious hours. Three months later, she still became dreamy over the feverish clutching of his moist fingers, the blind fixity of his eager, carp-like mouth, and his peculiar insistence on calling her "Mammy!" He had been so terribly demanding, even petulant, about what he needed -- things he had never requested before -- all described in obscenely visceral detail in lisping, hiccupping baby-talk.
Even before Ms. Dworkin dissected this phenomenon with such gusto, Fanny had realized that -- whatever the dank, mongrel motivations lurking behind it -- she liked this particular experience very much. Oh yes please, the whole hot, greasy bowl of ravioli.
When she coyly broached the subject the next morning -- "Mammy wants mo' of Baby's Mistuh Wiggly" -- his face had gone as red and expressionless as uncooked meatloaf. Droplets of sweat burst out upon his brow and he had rushed off abruptly, muttering about "unbridled Presidential perogative" and needing "more preemptive strikes." But Fanny had quickly stocked the medicine cabinet with all nine flavors of Nyquil, as well as Robitussin, Sudafed, Dristan Nasal Spray and several of the Thrifty generics. She counted the days until summer flu season, and, since allergy season might provide a medicating opportunity, began to track the pollen levels as well.
Once word got around the ladies' golf club, pharmacy shelves around the beltway were rapidly stripped bare of cough suppressants, anti-histamines and decongestants. Even items on nearby shelves -- E-Z Boil Remover, Corn pads, Preparation H, Beano -- had sold in the feeding frenzy.
"A rooster is a very randy male bird ... He cannot, however, mate with the same hen
more than five times in one day ... this is known as the 'rooster effect.'"
Ibid
But right now, the waffles had to be made and then the dog taken in to the vet. (Rufus was a turd eater. She sighed -- Men! -- sometimes it was all just too damn much.) So after a somewhat desultory "Umm mmm, that feels so hard and good, Mr. Ed," she sidestepped to pour the batter on the griddle. Caught unawares -- fixed grin, eyes clenched shut, yelping like a coyote -- her spouse continued to thrust urgently into empty space for a few more seconds. (To Fanny, it brought to mind a recent nature special in which the male preying mantis maintained the pace of his ardent lovemaking -- even after his head was eaten by the female.) Then, opening his eyes in surprise, he quickly straightened his suit jacket and sat down to see how the papers were treating his latest liberation of weak, primitive, ethnic nations.
When the government limousine pulled up outside, a devoted wife handed her beloved husband his briefcase and lunch, and kissed him softly on the cheek. Then Fanny looked up with concern:
"You sound a little stuffed up this morning, dear. Are you coming down with something?" she asked hopefully.
Henry E. Panky
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