4/2/94

The Bobbitts and the Orbaums

I married her for a lifetime of guaranteed safe sex, until one morning I picked up the paper...

    "Come here, lover boy."
    Was she talking to me? "I can't hear you," I called from the balcony, "I'm taking in the laundry."
    She snuck up behind me. "Gotcha!" she said, and then laughed lasciviously.
    "Oy!" I yawped. "Why'd you do that?" I hadn't been pinched back there since ... well, I don't think ever.
    She began checking me for lice -- or, if you believe her version, she was amorously running her fingers through my hair. "But I'm bald," I reminded her.
    That's when I noticed the look in her eyes. I hadn't seen that since the third Thursday in January a year ago. It gave me the willies.
    "You know what day it is today, honey buns? It's the third Thursday in January. And you know what that means, don't you?"
    Oh, no!
    "I have a headache this year."
    "A little champagne will cure that," she cooed.
    I gulped. "Aw, honey, let's be adult about this. I'm almost 38 years old, I've got bursitis in my elbow, a corn, the start of a jowl, post-nasal drip and I nicked myself shaving this morning. I'm not what I used to be. Tell you what. We'll play Scrabble instead. You can go first."
    She tore the shirt off my back. "You know that cologne you have that drives me crazy? Get it." A drop or two in my bellybutton once a year is enough to sustain a marriage until middle age or the next millenium, whichever comes first. "It evaporated," I said weakly. "Look," I continued, picking up a little steam, "I really don't know what you're going on about. We already have enough kids."
    She glared at me. She snarled felinely, like we once saw a wounded tigress in heat do in a National Geographic TV special. Then, quite unexpectedly, she grabbed the elastic of my underwear, stretched it as far as it would go and then let it snap back. It was my first wedgie since Grade 7, and it made me drop a handful of clothespins. "You're having an affair!" she bawled.
    "Don't be ridiculous, I'm Jewish."
    "Then what is it?"
    She looked at me with a mixture of loathing and disgust, which I misread as sympathy and pity. I sobbed, bit my lip and blurted out my deepest feelings to her: "It's John."
    "Who?"
    "John. You know, the penis man. John Bobbitt." 
    And even as I said it, I felt a sharp twinge.
    "I haven't been able to sleep," I whimpered, "ever since I began reading about the trial. When I do fall asleep I dream you're in the kitchen, rummaging about for the fleishig carving knife, and I wake up shaking. Maybe you think it's silly, but  this kind of news story gives people ideas, and who knows who's going to be next. The judge said John drove Lorena insane, so I keep thinking, what about me, have I been too pushy with you maybe?"
    "Once a year?!"
    "But it was 46 1/2 minutes non-stop!"
    "You're nuts!"
    "Yeah, so I'm obsessed with them, like you with your fingernails. But I don't fantasize about clipping your protruding parts."
    She sat down on the edge of the bed. "Let me get this straight," she said, none too sweetly. "You're shriveled like a raisin on a kugel because of a marital dispute the other side of the world, and to top it all you think I'm going to carry on where the mohel left off. Shake it off, bub, because it has nothing to do with you. His penis is his business. Does he lose sleep over your toothache?"
     "You're only a woman. You can't understand this emotional attachment men have to the end of their urinary tract. It's like a male maternal instinct, we're very protective of it. I can lose my nerve, I can lose my hair, I can lose the spring in my walk, but that I take with me all the way to the grave. Remember, 'till death do you part' refers to him and her, not him and it. And the same goes for 'to have and to hold.'"
    She scoffed. "So, Mr. Legal Expert, what's the punishment for breach of marriage contract?"
    "Well, I'm an old fashioned sort when it comes to the penile code. I say, 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.'"
    I don't really think she wanted to talk about it. She cracked her knuckles and growled through clenched teeth the way Clint Eastwood did when he said, "Go ahead, punk, make my day."
    Well, what's a guy to do when he's not in the mood, fake it?
    I don't believe in sex anymore because I read newspapers, which is proof that ignorance is bliss. In my formative years I assumed everyone old enough did it, liked it, fell asleep, woke up and did it again, as guilelessly as if they were putting on deodorant. Of course, back then, I only read the comics and the sports page.
    But then I began to notice those lurid news pages. Venereal disease. Unwanted pregnancies. Statutory rape. (Naturally, they never reported when a fellow did it and got away with it.) It looked like everybody was getting in trouble, and sex didn't seem to have much of a future. I was disappointed.
    And I was Jewish. That made matters worse. Sex is historically not a Jewish thing; a Yiddishe yingele would ask his saintly mother about sex and it was like asking how pork tastes. "Feh!"
    Then finally it happened, and the next thing I know there's an AIDS epidemic and I just want to escape with my life, find a girl who doesn't have it and marry her for a lifetime of guaranteed safe sex, until one morning I pick up the paper and read that Lorena Bobbitt cut off her husband's penis because he had excess sex with her and now my wife wonders why I'd rather be taking in the laundry.
    (It doesn't even end there. Almost as if to hit a man when he's down, so to speak, a couple of days after the Bobbitt verdict there was another news story. According to the Associated Press, a survey revealed that 15 percent of Quebeckers believe masturbation can make you deaf. And for crying out loud, I'm from Quebec.)
    (One may conclude that if you want to enjoy sex, don't read newspapers. But where does that leave us newspapermen?)

"OUT WITH it," she said. "You don't find me attractive anymore. Is that what it is?"
    "You're trying to make a big thing out of nothing," I assured her. "This is not between you and me, really, honey, it's between the Bobbitts and the Orbaums. I'm vicariously suffering with someone who experienced my worst nightmare. I'm sure all men are having the same problem. For all I know, maybe all women are right now having your problem. You know, aggressive super-confidence, sadistic domination of their repressive master-figure, and they're identifying with someone who experienced their wildest fantasy."
    "You think right now every woman is on the verge of giving every wimpy man a punch in the mouth?"
    "Be like that. I'm trying to have an intelligent conversation, and you just want to communicate in the basest, most primal manner."
    "Two million men in this country," she said disgustedly, "and I get the one who's great at talking women out of bed."
    I sympathized, really I did. I drew her closer, and kissed her on the cheek. "We'll get over it," I said soothingly. "John will begin physiotherapy. Lorena will start dating again. You'll take up a hobby. I'll see an analyst. Maybe by next January things will be different. In the meantime," I said with a boyish grin that always managed to make her mushy, "we can be comforted in that we have each other."
    It worked. She swooned.
    "I love you," she said.
    "I love you," I said.
    We embraced.
    "Right," she said, "Now shut up and take your clothes off. Or else."