WHAT THEY DID

By Charles Deemer

 

 

Let us admit from the beginning that they went to the same bad, and not always for sleep; that they could make love to climax, they could embrace in other than the missionary position, and In full daylight, performing even your fellatio, even your cunnilingus, they could go to bed for sex and nothing else. Admitting this, we shall not describe their lovemaking. They did other things as well.

 

THEY PLAYED POOL 

 

every Saturday night at the Buckhorn Tavern. Joe had his last load of logs to the mill by early afternoon, his check was cashed by a bartender soon thereafter, and six or seven beers brought out a contented grin by the time he drove his rig home to Edna's awaiting wrath. He kept grinning while she swore at him, telling him that he was late and drunk besides, he had ruined the evening for her, they would be late to the Buckhorn, Mike and Helen would have gotten tired of waiting for them and gone home -- and what the hell was so goddamn funny? Joe's reply was to slap Edna on the fanny as he passed on his way to the bathroom. She waited for the sound of water before following, then continued her list of grievances from the other side of the shower curtain, ending with the most serious grievance of all, that she "knew" he was carrying on with another woman. "I can't hear a word you're saying," Joe yelled over the spray of shower. When he emerged dripping, Edna was holding the towel to dry him off. 

Mike and Helen were not to the Buckhorn Tavern, though not for the reason Edna supposed. But Edna still reminded Joe that she had been right, they had waited and left. When Joe called over Stanley, the bartender, who said he hadn't seen them, Edna countered with, “You're so goddamn snockered you can’t pour straight, let alone see who's been here and hasn’t. This was her last comment for several slow beers. At seven Mike and Helen entered the tavern, arriving at their usual time, and Edna was quick to say, "Well, thank God for people in this world are goddamn courteous enough to come back and try again." 

There were few Saturdays on which the two couples did not have chicken dinner together at the tavern. Mike, like Joe, hauled logs; and his wife, like Edna, was a housewife in a home without children. But whereas Edna was barren, Helen had lost two children in a contested and vicious divorce, on the grounds that she was an alcoholic and unfit to raise them. Edna believed that the decree had been tragic and unfair, for although Helen drank steadily throughout the day, she drank only beer and never lost control of herself or was unable to do her housework. And Edna envied Helen's ability to keep up with the men. On Saturday nights Edna had to sip slowly, pacing herself, in order to last until closing time. 

She got a kick out of Helen. Helen never complained. Nothing intimidated her either, she could say racy things in public that Edna wouldn't think of saying to anyone but Joe, and then usually in anger. With Helen, sex was the very punctuation of her sentences. Once when Edna complained that her washing machine wasn't working, and Joe either too tired or too drunk to look at it, Helen was reminded of a past failure of her own machine and of the repairman who came to look at it but quickly became more interested In looking at her, and she meant at all of her, so that she had to threaten to call the police before convincing him she wasn't that kind of woman, and then deciding as she watched him drive away, the washing machine unrepaired, that by God she was that kind of woman, hornier than hell, and she ended up chain-smoking two packs of cigarettes waiting for Mike to get home and service her, to hell with the washing machine, and if he had been late she would have used the flashlight, by God. And naturally Helen told this story loud enough for Mike, who was quietly talking shop with Joe, to overhear; and Mike added that yes, she had about screwed him to death that day, he was still going to have to hire an extra man around the house to get all the chores done. The two couples laughed heartily at this, and Mike ordered more beer, asking for change in quarters for the pool table.

Joe got a kick out of Mike, too, at how he not only listened to his wife’s public ribaldry without either leaving the table or putting her in her place but even tagged on a racy affirmation to each story. Not that Joe believed all those plumbers and milkmen and meter-readers were obsessed with getting Helen into bed, who except for being remarkably stacked wasn’t any sexier than Edna or anyone else; what amused Joe was that Mike let her go on like this in public without seeming to worry that sooner or later someone might get the idea there was an actual flame under so much smoldering. Certainly this idea had occurred to Joe.

Did Helen purposely brush against him as they played pool? Joe was surveying the table, deciding on a shot. Helen, always Joe's partner when it wasn’t the men against the women, maneuvered to pass between the wall and his back, her breasts shooting a quick chill down his spine. Later she asked him for advice, standing so close he could smell the beer on her breath. "Would you try to poke the blue one into the side pocket?" "Yeah, I’d do that." He wondered what she was really thinking. He wondered what schemes were being devised. Women were a sneaky bunch, he knew. He noticed that Helen’s breasts touched the cushion as she leaned forward for the shot. 

Edna did not care that Helen flirted with Joe, which was simply Helen's way. Men were who you flirted with. Joe was just another plumber, another meter-reader. Men were only interested in a woman's body, and flirting was the offense that with some men became the best defense. Helen’s flirting scared Joe off, Edna observed, just as her own flirting scared off Mike. 

Occasionally Edna wandered what Mike would be like in bed. She was merely curious. Was he circumcised? Joe wasn't, the only man like that she had ever seen. Was Mike gentle or rough, was he silent or not? She thought Mike would be silent, as most men were. Joe was so quiet she sometimes could not tell when he had finished or whether he had succeeded. Edna herself often wanted to cry out, to scream, and although Joe encouraged this in her, although he found this exciting in her, his own silence had worked to inhibit her. She found herself silently biting her lips. Would Mike cry out, thereby letting her let go? Once, a long time ago, a man had picked her up in a bar, and they had gone to a motel to cry out in unison. Edna no longer remembered his name. It didn’t matter, Joe was her third husband and by far the best. She had no important complaints. Their five years together had been the best of her life. Then why did she wonder what it would be like with Mike? She was only curious. She watched him line up a shot, confident, precise, skillful, doing something for the sake of doing it well. Crazy things entered her head. She wondered what it would feel like to play pool in the nude.

Joe thought, If Helen had nursed her children before losing them, then her breasts sagged. Nursing caused sagging breasts, or at least he remembered reading this somewhere, probably in an old magazine at the barbershop. He didn't like to think that he was admiring an illusion, the miracle a bra’s doing. Once it had occurred to him that each of his four wives had larger breasts than her predecessor. He didn’t know what significance this had, or why the observation made him uncomfortable. Helen had a full inch-and-a-half, two inches, on Edna, who was no pancake. Much more uplift too, if Helen hadn’t nursed. He hoped she hadn’t. He wondered how in hell a guy could find out something like that. He obviously couldn’t ask Mike. He was just curious. 

 

THIEY WONDERED 

 

What they were missing. Joe was forty-one, Edna thirty-eight, and their five years together had been the happiest years each had known, But sometimes they wondered what they were missing, They were more private than Mike and Helen, who shared intimacies with anyone who would listen. Joe and Edna thought it was no one’s business but theirs what they did in bed, and when, but Mike and Helen talked of little else. Were Joe and Edna, not similarly possessed, getting old before their time? Did they have sex often enough, as often as Mike and Helen? They never discussed this together, but each asked the sane question, privately. Were they missing something? 

Edna wondered if Joe wanted children. He had a son and two daughters by the wives before her, and Joe insisted this was all any man should add to the population. But it would be like him to say this for her sake, hiding his need for a family by her. The funny thing was, Edna herself had absolutely no desire to have children. But she didn't want to deprive Joe. She wondered if he wanted to adopt children and meant to ask him but never did. Oh, she would. She wished Joe would say what was really on his mind. He was so quiet, in bed and out. He hid some things for her benefit, she knew. He was sweet that way. 

Joe wouldn't have believed what a liberating effect Edna's ' barrenness had made on his sex life. His last daughter, by the third wife, had not been planned, and after the conception Joe was obsessed with the knowledge that every performance of love included the risk of adding another dependent, another mouth to feed. He could barely afford two child-support payments, let alone a third mouth to feed at home. For several months, fearing another child, he thought he had become impotent. His former wife still thought so. This was how she explained Edna, and no kids. 

Edna wondered if her fantasy of having sex in bed with Mike meant that another marriage was turning sour, and this one so good in so many ways, the best marriage she'd had. She wished she could turn off her mind like a faucet. But the faucet dripped, crazy thoughts filled her head.

Joe wondered about societies in which a man kept a harem. This arrangement seemed to fit the nature of things more closely than monogamy. He thought he was capable of loving more than one woman at once, although he was prudent enough to resist letting this happen. But in Egypt, or wherever it was men kept harems, he would marry Edna first and Helen second. Sometimes he wondered what it would be like to have them at the same time, together. 

 

THSY DRANK 

 

beer on a Saturday night in the Buckhorn Tavern, playing pool. 

"Okay, I'll try her right here," said Mike, pointing with the cue. The shot was perfect, the eight-ball glancing off a cushion into a side-pocket. "Who has a quarter?" 

"I do," said Helen, "but it’s going for music." 

Suddenly she had grabbed Joe’s arm and was leading him to the jukebox. Helen smelled like beer and perfume, and her breasts joggled.

"What do you want to hear?" she asked Joe, 

He grinned. 

“Now that doesn’t tell me anything," she said. 

"Merle Haggard. Anything by him," 

"Good enough." 

She dropped in the quarter and punched three songs. 

"You still want to play pool?" Joe asked, 

“You sound like you have something else in mind." 

She was smiling at him in her flirtatious way. He hadn’t meant the question to come out with a double meaning. Helen was a poor shooter, and Joe thought she'd rather switch to shuffleboard. 

"Just thought maybe you were tired of pool." 

"You mean you're not hustling me? You're too bashful for your own good." 

"Oh yeah?" 

But he didn't sound forceful, he sounded meek, the question nark swallowed. Oh yeah, she was right, he was Inhibited. Helen winked at him, 

"Actually, I’m kinda tired," she said, "and ready for beddy-bye." 

She started back to the pool table, and he followed.

 

While Joe and Helen were at the jukebox, Mike said to Edna, "You look like you got problems.” 

"I shouldn’t, we haven't lost a game tonight thanks to you.”

"You’re shooting better yourself." He began racking for a new game. "'Sure nothing's bothering you?" 

"Only that I managed to get too goddamn drunk." 

"Just asking. Cause I’m a good shoulder for crying on if you ever get the need. Don’t you forget it." 

Edna excused herself to go to the ladies room and when she returned she found Mike and Helen in their coats, ready to leave. Helen explained that she had a headache.

 

THEY ARGUED 

 

as soon as they were alone in the pickup. They had played out Mike’s rack without enthusiasm, Joe winning easily. They played silently, quickly, and then left. Edna saved her grievances until they were alone. 

"Well, you finally had to do it, didn’t you? Spoil the whole goddamn night by doing it, too." 

"Do what?" Joe turned the key, and the engine roared. 

"You don’t expect me to believe she had a fucking headache, do you? She drinks every goddamn hour of every goddamn day without getting a headache. Shit." 

"Wash out your mouth." He put the truck in reverse. 

"Why? I ain’t no fucking lady, and you ain’t no fucking gentleman either, screwing off like that and ruining the whole goddamn night. If you want to screw her so bad, why don’t--"

"Oh, for Christ's sake." 

"I ain’t so goddamn blind." 

Joe breathed deeply and turned the truck for home. 

"I seen you leaning up against her tits," said Edna. "I seen you at the jukebox, too. That’s where you put it to her, isn’t it? But she had enough sense to get the hell out before you tried to rape her on the fucking pool table." 

"'Very funny. You’re drunk." 

"So what? Who the fuck are you, Jesus H. Christ? You smell like a goddamn brewery, you son-of-a-bitch." 

"So take the rifle and blow my head off." 

Edna turned to the rifle mounted above the window behind them. 

"So do it," said Joe. 

"I wouldn't waste the bullet." 

"Want me to run off the road and solve both our problems?” 

"I want you to take us goddamn home, mister, and no fucking funny business." 

They entered the house through the back door, and Joe stopped at the refrigerator, 

"Want a beer?" he asked. 

"Sure"" 

They sat together on the divan. The television set was on, the lone gray light in a dark house. They watched an old movie and drank. 

At a commercial Joe said, "I swear to God, I never asked her to do anything but play a Merle Haggard song." 

Edna laughed, "Which one?" 

"Anything, I didn’t give a shit." 

"You lying, lecherous son-of-a-bitch." 

"Listen, I look around as much as the next guy but I’m not going to get my head shot off by touching anything." 

"You better do some goddamn touching." 

He reached under her sweater. 

"That ain’t so bad, huh?" 

"Not bad," said Joe. 

"If I can't keep you happy, nobody can." 

"Damn right." 

"You ain’t going to find nothing on the street--" 

"--I can’t get at home." 

Joe pulled up the sweater. 

"Take off your bra," he said.

"Take the goddamn thing off yourself." 

He did. 

Edna said, as Joe kissed a breast, "You want a kid, don’t you?" 

"Hell, no." 

"Lying son-of-a-bitch." 

"Shut the fuck up." 

Edna relaxed. The argument was over, they were making up. She hoped they weren’t too drunk to make up all the way.  She let Joe undress her in his clumsy way, not helping him to hurry things. Sometimes he wanted to hurry too much. She wondered if Mike was that way, if all men were in a hurry, wanting to get to it as quickly as possible. Were men afraid they would lose it if they didn't rush? Was Mike that way? She could easily enough imagine Joe being Mike, that it was Mike undressing her now, as clumsy as Joe, in a hurry like Joe, she could imagine the two men, all men, having the same hands she felt now. But what if she was wrong? 

Joe looked at Edna’s breasts and imagined another two Inches. What did Helen’s nipples look like? Edna’s v«re small in diameter, the size of cherries, and now hard and erect. Did Helen’s nipples have the diameter of plums? He would never know but he could imagine, he could invent. 

When they were both undressed, they closed the curtains. Although their country home had no near neighbors, this was something they always did before making love by television light in the living room. Closed curtains reinforced their privacy. Unlike Mike and Helen, they were private people. They would share their love with no shadowy voyeurs stalking in the night. They closed the curtains and felt safe, private. Edna looked at Joe and saw Mike and Joe together, each the other's reflection, a man; Joe saw Edna and Helen superimposed, a woman. They returned to the divan and--

But what they did next is not something we shall describe, it led to no ecstasy they would share.

 

 

/end