Reinventing Mona (16 page)

“Hey, how did we get onto this? We should get moving or we’ll miss the game.”

We arrived at the field just after the first quarter started and unfolded our chairs next to Mike, who was already there. “Hey, I thought you guys were blowing me off,” he said, lifting his coffee cup from the pocket of his folding armchair. Greta saw us and nodded her head to say hello.

“I’m sure you would have done fine on your own,” I said as I patted the back of his well-worn rugby jersey.  As I ran my fingers across the blue cotton I realized that, to my great dismay, I enjoyed the feeling of Mike’s body moving under my hand. It was more than his Downy fabric softener that excited each line of my fingerprints.

Good God, he has nice shoulders, I lusted. Adam has nice shoulders, too, and a solid set of values and a lovely family to marry into.

Mike’s snorting retort snapped me back to reality. “What, are you kidding? Twenty-two sweaty lesbians pushing and shoving each other. I’m in heaven here.”

“Hey, that’s my wife out there, dude,” said a guy with a pumpkin stomach and an outgrown bleached mullet. “She’s no lesbian.”

“Lighten up, man,” he shot back. Then, glancing at the man’s wife on the field, Mike continued, “I’d be cranky, too, if I was married to her.” Vicki and I feared that this soccer match was about to get very European in a few seconds.

“Whaddya say, dude?”

Mike sat back in his chair, lifted his sunglasses, and continued. “I said if that was my wife—”

“Dude! You write the Dog column in
Maximum
For Him
! I’d know your face anywhere!” Mike nodded. “Your shit’s hilarious. I read you every month.”

“Hey, thanks, buddy.” He reached for his hand. They did this ridiculous hand-slapping, grabbing, shoulder-bumping nonsense that they must have thought made them look cool. “I didn’t mean anything by the lesbian thing.”

“Hey, don’t sweat it, bro. Don’t I wish it, right?”

Vicki and I rolled our eyes at each other. “Has he always been like this?” I asked her.

“A dickhead? Yes,” Vicki said a little too loud for the other spectators’ comfort.

The Goalin’ Grrrls fans rose to their feet and started yelling. A yellow jersey passed the ball to another who shot a ball that grazed Greta’s gloves and dropped into the goal. For the rest of the game, Mike and Mullet Man bonded through beer and lawn chair coaching. Vicki and I were on our feet, screaming like a teen sighting of Ricky Martin. We had soccer fever and we had it bad. Vicki hungrily watched the tactics of the game, while I was simply interested in the Kickin’ Chicks winning. By the end of the half, the score was two to one in favor of the Chicks. Vicki and I were like mad women, chanting “Kickin’ Chicks!” like it was a battle cry. We recruited about a half dozen fans to join us, and unsuccessfully tried to start a wave of twenty people. The others thought we were simply insane as we screamed and hugged each other with every goal for the home team.

Ditch The Bitch

—The Dog House, February

February is the shortest month of the year, but the first two weeks feel like eternal damnation for us guys. The countdown to Valentine’s Day begins, and women around the world are yapping to each other about what “special and beautiful” plans they have with their boyfriends. It gets mighty competitive, let me tell you. One girl says her boyfriend rented out an entire restaurant for just the two of them, then another chimes in that her guy is taking her to dinner in Paris. Soon, a third pipes in that her boyfriend is buying her a ring.

Normally, I’d say so what. Who cares what chicks are talking about among themselves? Most of the time it’s harmless chatter about period cramps and toenail polish, but when they start in with the battle of the boyfriends it affects us. It affects us because when they start playing in the romantic Super Bowl, guess who the only losers are? Men! There’s no way we can win because some woman is always going to exaggerate about how “special and beautiful” her Valentine Day was, and the rest of them are going to come storming back to you complaining about your meager box of cookies or fistful of daisies. These standbys won’t do anymore. Guys are expected to be creative. We’ve got to constantly jump a bar set higher and higher by women.

I say enough. It’s time to draw the line. This year, let’s turn the tables and make Valentine’s Day one that women will never forget. Now, this’ll only work if we all do it, so none of you better wimp out on me, got it? This year bag the flowers, eat the Oreos yourself, and ditch the bitch. You read right—ditch the bitch. If every guy dumps his girlfriend right before or the evening of Valentine’s Day, we’ve set the bar right where we want it—low to the ground (hell, on the ground!). It’s kind of like going on strike. Our union, Guys Local 428, is staging a walkout, brothers! This may sound cruel and inhumane, but management has abused its power long enough. I can hear you right now. Dog, if I dump my girlfriend how am I going to get laid? Dog, I kind of like my girlfriend, I’m not ready to dump her just yet. Or, the truly pitiful Dog, I’m married. I’ll address your concerns in reverse order: If you’re married, you obviously can’t get rid of her so easily. And hey, a guy does need his laundry done, so just skip the Valentine’s Day gift. No dinner and no card either: We’ve got to stick together and make this a dry Valentine’s Day for wives and girlfriends alike. Second, even if you dig your girlfriend, dump her anyway. You’ll get her back if you want. Just call a few days later and tell her you’re sorry, you were afraid of your own feelings, whatever line of shit you can come up with. And finally, you will get laid again. Don’t let the fear of never getting laid again turn you into a whipped man. You will get laid. As long as there are women in bars and booze flowing, you will get laid again. Have faith.

Why ditch the bitch? Because if every woman in America gets shunned this Valentine’s Day, guess whose carnations and Reese’s Pieces are gonna look pretty freakin’ amazing next year? They’re not gonna lower the bar for us. We’ve gotta do it. For ourselves. For our future sons and theirs to follow. Ditch the bitch for a better tomorrow.

The first time I read Mike’s latest column was in late January when it arrived in my mailbox, but I had to revisit it after Mike called just before 8 P.M. on Valentine’s Day—minutes after his new girlfriend dumped him. When I first read the article, it seemed like just another one of Mike’s chauvinistic musings, but now it really irritated me. Not just because it was unkind, poorly written, and completely devoid of any humor or insight, but because it was so unreflective of the Mike I knew. He swears that what you see is what you get with him, but what I was seeing and getting were two entirely different breeds of dog.

Mike and I were on the phone lamenting our respective failures with the opposite sex. My problem was lack of opportunities. Mike’s was that he screwed up all of his. Tonight, he proved that was true.

Kelly, the new woman Mike was dating, was in the midst of cooking a sweet romantic dinner for the two of them at her apartment. I imagined her taking Cornish game hens out of the oven and gingerly brushing soy sauce on the crisp skin. I saw her reaching into her cupboards for wineglasses, her long blond hair languishing down her arched back. I saw her excitement growing as her perfect body strutted to set the dinner table. Instinctively stepping, rolling, then dragging in her CFM shoes. I imagined Kelly pushing up her boobs, making her Wonderbra work double-time when the phone rang and her friend read Mike’s moronic column to her.

I told Mike I didn’t blame Kelly for dumping him, especially since she was guaranteed the same fate over a meal she slaved to prepare. Mike didn’t see it this way. He explained that his column was entertainment, not advice. “Mike!” I yelled. “You
advised
these men to go on strike. You said you were some sort of guy’s union going on strike. You were like Norma Rae standing with a sign over your head with a picture of a heart and a slash mark through it. What’s worse, your assumption about why women talk about their Valentine’s Day gifts is so wrong. It’s not so we can show off about how we’ve got you whipped. It’s because we love you, and when you do sweet things for us it shows you love us, too. What’s wrong with wanting to tell people about how wonderful your boyfriend or husband is? What’s wrong with wanting to shout from the rooftops that you found a real prince out there? Honestly, Mike, sometimes I don’t know why I hired you. You just spout out all these clichés about men and women, and I suspect any advice you have for me about Adam is going to be as useless as your column is to your readers.”

“I know.” He sighed. He sounded like a man who was exhausted by living the life he prescribed, but I’m sure that was just wishful thinking on my part. I’m sure he was simply hungry and bummed that he wouldn’t be getting sex that night. “I know I’m a fuckup, but I also know the difference between real advice and a humor column. When I give you a game plan for your boy, it’ll be effective, believe me.”

He seemed a bit down so I refrained from giving him my advice for future “humor” columns—try to inject something funny. “So Mike,” I said instead, “what happened with your ex-wife?” leaned back into my bed and pulled the blanket up to my neck.

“Whoa, that’s outta left field,” Mike returned.

“Not really. I’ve been wondering ever since you told me you were once married. What happened between you?” Backing off only slightly I said, “I mean, did she ask too much of you on Valentine’s Day?”

He sighed. “I don’t want to get into this, Mona. What’s done is over.”

“Don’t ever say that in front of Greta.” I laughed.

“Who?”

“My friend,” I reminded. “The goalkeeper, remember?”

“Oh, the dyke?” he· recalled.

“Greta’s not a dyke,” I shot.

“Yeah, you’re right. The femme.” he corrected himself.

“The what?”

“The femme, the femme,” Mike said impatiently, asking with his tone what rock I’d been living under that I’d never heard the term. “The femme. A pretty lesbian. You know, the girlie one.”

“What are you talking about? Just because Greta plays soccer doesn’t make her a lesbian.”

Mike laughed. “Whatever gets you through the night, Mona Lisa. Surely your friend is familiar with the term denial.” He snickered again as if he pitied my inability to see what was so obvious to the rest of the world.

“You’re just avoiding the question. Whatever happened with your wife?”

He told me he was married for six years to a woman named Rachel he met in college. She had fiery red hair and green eyes with a look that was pure Irish. “She was really amazing at first. We clicked on everything. We’d go out and get so wrapped up in whatever we were talking about that after we got home, we’d sit in the driveway for an hour afterward. I almost killed us once by forgetting to turn off the engine.” Mike’s voice softened as he spoke about Rachel, then got heavy, and he stopped. I urged him to continue, and after a few protests, he talked for another two hours about all of the things he loved about Rachel. They met on campus where he worked at the student newspaper, and wrote a story, “Where the Naked Chicks Are.” One such place was Rachel’s art class. Rachel was revolted by his assignment (an idea which he failed to mention was his own), but couldn’t resist the chemistry between them. I imagined there was something about his rough arrogance combined with his enchantment with her that Rachel found irresistible. With her aspirations to become a professional glassmaker, she was an exotic delicacy for him. For her, Mike was, well, a hot dog.

“So what went wrong?” I asked. “D’you cheat on her?”

“No, Mona. I didn’t,” he said in a way that suggested it was she who strayed.

“Did
she
?”

He sighed a heavy confirmation. “Yep,” was all he said, but it sounded like the air rushing from the truck tire that had been slashed. “Said I was an ‘emotional vacuum.’ Didn’t ‘share’ enough with her. You know, a guy’s got problems and doesn’t want to dump ‘em on his wife. S’at a crime? So she signs us up for couples counseling, which is a disaster. The guy is sitting there asking me how I feel about what Rachel’s telling me about our problems. So I say, ‘Not good.’ I guess that’s not what he had in mind because Rachel rolls her eyes and he’s looking at me like, ‘Wrong answer, Tonto.’ So he goes on. ‘What I mean is how does it make you
feel?
’ So I tell him real slow, ‘Not. Good.’ So he says, real impatient, ‘Does it make you feel hurt, rejected, sad?’ I don’t know, maybe I should have said it did. Maybe that was the right thing to say, but honest to God all I felt was not good. After three times, I told Rachel I didn’t want to go any more because I thought we could work things out on our own. She seemed okay about it, but said she was going to keep going by herself, which was okay by me. Then, about ten months later, she comes home and tells me that she’s met someone else and she’s thinking about leaving me.”

“Thinking about it?” I asked.

“Yeah, she says she’s still in love with me, but I won’t let her in and she wants to connect with someone. She’s lonely, she says. Then, right after she tells me this, she says, ‘Please say something to make me stay. Tell me it will be different. Tell me you’ll try to make it different. Tell me you want me to stay.’”

“Did you do it?” I said, rolling onto my stomach to hear the rest of his story.

“I don’t like being told what to say,” he dismissed. “It’s fake and I feel like an idiot saying a bunch of shit Rachel’s therapist thinks I should say.”

“Did you say anything?”

“What’s there to say to a wife who’s cheating on me?”

I felt Rachel’s desperation in trying to get more from Mike. She told him a dozen times that they were drifting apart and she wanted to reconnect. She waited for years for things to get better between them, but they never did. And he never tried to make them better. Finally, Rachel resigned herself to the painfully inevitable truth that Mike wasn’t going to lift a finger to make their relationship work. What she didn’t know was that he had no idea how. When Rachel pleaded with Mike, it was like the stranger who approaches you asking for directions in a foreign language. She urgently tugs your arm, rattling off what sounds like Spanish or maybe Portuguese or Italian. You know she needs your help, but for the life of you, you have no idea what she’s saying.