I had no idea how miserable my wife was until I heard her talk in her sleep.
My first experience with her somniloquies was about twenty years ago while on vacation in Vieques. (Why one would go to Puerto Rico when one could just as easily go to Florida is a mystery I will leave for later).
Passed out by the pool after her third Cuba Libre, I noticed Betty's exposed calves were turning the color of steak tartar. (Why the French see fit to waste perfectly good hamburger meat is another matter best deferred to the future).
Dutiful to a fault I fetched a fresh towel to cover my bride's bare legs and it was then that I first heard the grumble that has since dogged my nights with suspicion.
Nobody likes to imagine their wife in flagrante with another man so when the grumble turned plaintive and partially coherent I ignored it in spite of my curiosity.
A few years later when my wife and I would still occasionally go out for a leisurely lunch at a sidewalk café and idly watch the suburban world unfold in all its indolent splendor I noticed Betty's attention drift even more than usual. Being married is an interesting process where one gradually grows accustomed to being rendered insignificant. A perfect stranger will at least afford you the courtesy of feigning interest while a wife won't think twice before dozing off while you're in mid-sentence.
And so it was one summer afternoon when the heat and the chardonnay and my annoying voice all conspired to lull my wife into a prone siesta at Sally's Continental Bistro in downtown Elmira.
Now I know that women are capable of all types of deception but I had never heard of someone faking an orgasm in their sleep.
It was brief but unmistakable.
That Betty was still capable of arousal should not have come as a surprise but of course it did. Like many middle aged men I mistook my wife's ambivalence towards me as a disinterest in intimacy in general. I foolishly saw it as something that occurs specifically to older women, as if they were from another species whose sexually curdled like milk when it aged.
I decided not to bring the matter up, for after all, one should never be held accountable for the content one's dreams. All the same I've often wondered if Betty's garbled, midnight syllabics was an imaginative article of longing or an involuntary admission of guilt.
Or perhaps it was just a prolonged campaign of calculated revenge after that unfortunate incident with the babysitter.
Passed out by the pool after her third Cuba Libre, I noticed Betty's exposed calves were turning the color of steak tartar. (Why the French see fit to waste perfectly good hamburger meat is another matter best deferred to the future).
Dutiful to a fault I fetched a fresh towel to cover my bride's bare legs and it was then that I first heard the grumble that has since dogged my nights with suspicion.
Nobody likes to imagine their wife in flagrante with another man so when the grumble turned plaintive and partially coherent I ignored it in spite of my curiosity.
And so it was one summer afternoon when the heat and the chardonnay and my annoying voice all conspired to lull my wife into a prone siesta at Sally's Continental Bistro in downtown Elmira.
Now I know that women are capable of all types of deception but I had never heard of someone faking an orgasm in their sleep.
It was brief but unmistakable.
That Betty was still capable of arousal should not have come as a surprise but of course it did. Like many middle aged men I mistook my wife's ambivalence towards me as a disinterest in intimacy in general. I foolishly saw it as something that occurs specifically to older women, as if they were from another species whose sexually curdled like milk when it aged.
I decided not to bring the matter up, for after all, one should never be held accountable for the content one's dreams. All the same I've often wondered if Betty's garbled, midnight syllabics was an imaginative article of longing or an involuntary admission of guilt.
Or perhaps it was just a prolonged campaign of calculated revenge after that unfortunate incident with the babysitter.
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