By now the fire had fizzled, and Dana was swizzled. <\/p>\n
He looked at Dana Feminita, and discovered that she was weeping. The hoops were off her barrel and she was drunk. Usually, Julian would also be three sheets to the wind, in tandem with his wife. He had discovered that writing drunk was doable, even laudable. He preferred to do it sober, but could swing both ways. There was a tipping point, after which no work got done. On the other hand, sex while drunk was flat out impossible. So much for the received wisdom. Dealing with a drunk wife while drunk was easy; dealing with a drunk wife while sober required nerves of steel. She was weeping, curled up in a ball in her chair, her laptop fallen by the wayside beside the chair. These were things that were never a good sign. His entire survival strategy during these excruciating exchanges involved mostly biting his tongue, saying next to nothing, and not allowing the game to escalate. It was diametrically opposed to his nature, and he often failed at it. Sometimes he died a horrible death. He turned his attention to rebuilding the fire. He more or less knew what he was in for. He might as well get warmed up.
\n\t\u201cYou shit,\u201d she slurred.
\nHe did not respond to this.
\n\t\u201cYou\u2019re a piece of work.\u201d
\n\t\u201cWhat are you talking about, sweetie?\u201d
\n\t\u201cYou know damn well what I\u2019m talking about.\u201d
\n\t\u201cHonestly, I don\u2019t. I was writing. We weren\u2019t talking about anything.\u201d
\n\t\u201cThat whore.\u201d
\n\t\u201cWhich whore?\u201d
\n\t\u201cYou know which one. There are others?\u201d
\nUnless she was talking about that blogger, Amy Lissa, he had no idea what she was talking about. This was a second marriage for both of them. Julian had done his divorce pro se without undue enmity regarding his ex. Dana, on the other hand, had endured a humiliating divorce, preceded by serial philandering, adulteries by both parties, financial tom-foolery, and some spectacularly wicked lawyering. These topics were not that far beneath her surface. She would speak about them with venom when perfectly sober. When she was drunk, she seemed sometimes to forget which husband she was with. On the other hand, she would say things that might be applicable to Julian and their marriage, and often no matter who or what she was talking about, Julian thought that he should pay attention to the \u201cin vino veritas\u201d for any shred of significant veritas. In the present line of reasoning, he was tempted to offer the name of her former nemesis, but elected to keep silent.
\n\t\u201cShit!\u201d She spoke a bit louder, and struck her fist on her thigh.
\n\t\u201cYou can\u2019t get away with ignoring me. Everyone always tries that. I\u2019m tired of just being ignored.\u201d
\n\t\u201cNobody ignores you, Dana. You\u2019re adored by all. You have a ton of friends. You have even more Facebook friends.\u201d
\n\t\u201cFashe-book. Fuck Facebook.\u201d
\n\t\u201cFacebook is fupped duck.\u201d
\nIt occurred to him to wonder why he was indulging in this at all. He could flee to another room in the house. Two reasons: one, he was enjoying and tending the fire; two, he had a death wish with regard to Dana. He was very curious to know what was at the bottom of her beautiful mind. By day, she was a near saint. Here, now, on this occasion, as on a few others past and future, she was awash and her mind was ugly. He began to actually take notes on the raw. He took up his laptop. It had the effect of intensifying her rant, which he wrote down verbatim.
\n\t\u201cShe. There you go again with that netbook. I get ignored on Fashebook and I get ignored here at home. You\u2019re an asshole, you know what? I am a shpeshel pershon, and I don\u2019t deserve this crap. What are you doing on that thing? Talking to that little whore again?\u201d
\n\t\u201cWho do you keep talking about?\u201d
\n\t\u201cWhash her name?\u201d
\n\t\u201cWho\u2019s name?\u201d
\n\t\u201cThat goddamn blogger, you idiot!\u201d
\n\t\u201cWhich one? I look at so many blogs\u2026\u201d
\n\t\u201cAnnie\u2026 Aimless Annie!\u201d
\nAh ha, thought Julian. She\u2019s wounded by the mere image of Amy. She\u2019s hardly read a teaspoon of the language. Also, Aimless Annie is perilously close to \u201cAndr\u00e9s Amos (Amos and Andy). Has his other cover been blown as well? He put that blog up only a few hours ago. There\u2019s no way for her to know about that yet, unless she\u2019s been snooping. It\u2019s another insane coincidence. Not enough phonemes, or names, to go around. Or is it something in the water? Is he going crazy? Paranoia strikes again?
\n\t\u201cYou mean \u201cAmy Lissa?\u201d
\n\t\u201cThash the one. Amy Lissha.\u201d
\n\t\u201cBabe. You\u2019re drunk.\u201d
\n\t\u201cSo? So are you!\u201d
\n\t\u201cI usually am at this hour, but tonight I\u2019m not.\u201d
\n\t\u201cBullshit! Your drink is right there!\u201d
\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s just juice. Here sniff.\u201d
\nDana fidgeted in her chair. She got up and tried to put a log on the fire. He watched as she lunged at the woodpile and tossed a large piece of lumber into the wan fire. She grabbed for the grappler, but it fell open and hit her on the ankle. She didn\u2019t feel a thing, but Julian looked carefully for signs of a wound. None appeared. She worked at righting the implement. She went to work at repositioning her log. She finally landed it right where she wanted it.
\n\t\u201cGood job, Dana.\u201d
\nShe gave him an insincere smile. Her face was bright red even in the flickering light.
\nHe held his breath that she might have forgotten her last topic. She hadn\u2019t.
\n\t\u201cI still can\u2019t believe you dragged that nimwad into your class dishcussian. You must have it bad. Got a serious crush, Julian? Do we need to talk about this?\u201d
\n\t\u201cWe are talking about it, but the discussion is seriously impaired, because you are seriously impaired.\u201d
\nHe\u2019s done enough AA to know better than to try this, but his ability to alter his way of thinking to accommodate changing circumstances has never been a strong point.
\n\t\u201cBecause it\u2019s going to make a mess out of your career. You\u2019ll make me the laughingstock of the whole faculty. The students already think you\u2019re crazy. She\u2019s just a little eye candy that you can\u2019t resist. All the others can see that, the faculty, the staff, the students. But you, you silly dick, can\u2019t see it.\u201d
\nHe\u2019s sitting now, typing this up, letting his fingers do the work automatically. He keeps a level gaze on her. As she finishes this last blast, he rests a hand on the couch and drums his fingers.
\n\t\u201cAm I getting through to you?\u201d
\n\t\u201cLoud and clear.\u201d
\n\t\u201cI am very tired of being abandoned in this house.\u201d
\n\t\u201cI agree. We should quit drinking and put the computers away.
\n\t\u201cWe don\u2019t have a problem with drinking.\u201d
\nHe drummed his fingers a bit more vigorously.
\n\t\u201cWe don\u2019t,\u201d she repeated. Who was she trying to convince?\u201d
\n\t\u201cI\u2019m tired of not having sex.\u201d
\n\t\u201cI agree. We have a sex problem.\u201d
\n\t\u201cWhen was the last time we did it?\u201d
\n\t\u201cA month ago or so. That\u2019s a bit better than before, when the answer was so far back I don\u2019t remember.\u201d
\n\t\u201cAnd you are a terrible lover.\u201d
\n\t\u201cI am?\u201d
\n\t\u201cYou have no idea. You are the most unromantic man I ever met.\u201d
\n\t\u201cI think of myself as a romantic. I think I\u2019m a Tantric.\u201d
\n\t\u201cFuck that Tantric shit.\u201d
\n\t\u201cOr not, as the case may be. Look, we\u2019re either drunk or we\u2019re busy. How do we get it on when we don\u2019t have time for it?\u201d
\n\t\u201cWe have to make time, dickwad. And you have to stop mooning around over whores on the internet. And you have to learn how to properly make love to a woman.\u201d<\/p>\n
He picks his arm up off the arm of his chair and lets it fall. It is a lame gesture of aggression.<\/p>\n
Dana gets up to go mix up another drink. He follows her out to the kitchen after staring at the fire for a moment. In his mind, he resolves to never mention Amy again. He has already begun the process of removing his mentions of her on his blogspot blog, taking that blog down, and setting up another under a pseudonym.
\nIn the kitchen, he pours himself a drink, finally. If you can\u2019t beat \u2018em join \u2018em.<\/p>\n
In the morning, when he scrapes himself off the floor on which he\u2019s passed out, he approaches Dana as she\u2019s making coffee.
\n\t\u201cThat was quite a load of shit you dropped on me last night.\u201d
\n\t\u201cReally? What did I say?\u201d
\n\t\u201cThat I\u2019m a terrible lover.\u201d
\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t remember any of that.\u201d
\n\t\u201cIn vino veritas.\u201d
\n\t\u201cWhat else did I say?\u201d
\n\t\u201cYou said enough that I realized that certain things I say and do are very hurtful to you. Some things need to not be indulged in or pursued.\u201d
\n\t\u201cWhat things?\u201d
\n\t\u201cNothing specific. Just sayin.\u2019\u201d
\n\t\u201cYou\u2019re saying not much of anything.\u201d
\n\t\u201cYou said you were tired of being ignored.\u201d
\n\t\u201cI said that?\u201d
\n\t\u201cYou said Facebook was fucked up.\u201d
\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s your veritas.\u201d
\n\t\u201cYou kept saying that I was an asshole, a dickwad.\u201d
\nShe shook her head. Sotto voce, she muttered,
\n\t\u201cIf that\u2019s what I said last night, I really do gotta quit drinking.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By now the fire had fizzled, and Dana was swizzled. He looked at Dana Feminita, and discovered that she was weeping. The hoops were off her barrel and she was drunk. Usually, Julian would also be three sheets to the wind, in tandem with his wife. He had discovered that writing drunk was doable, even laudable. He preferred to do it sober, but could swing both ways. There was a tipping point, after which no work got done. On the other hand, sex while drunk was flat out impossible. So much for the received wisdom. Dealing with a drunk wife while drunk was easy; dealing with a drunk wife while sober required nerves of steel. She was weeping, curled up in a ball in her chair, her laptop fallen by the wayside beside the chair. These were things that were never a good sign. His entire survival strategy during these excruciating exchanges involved mostly biting his tongue, saying next to nothing, and not allowing the game to escalate. It was diametrically opposed to his nature, and he often failed at it. Sometimes he died a horrible death. He turned his attention to rebuilding the fire. He more or less knew…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chapters","comments-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/bloggers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/bloggers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/bloggers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/bloggers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/bloggers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/bloggers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/bloggers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/bloggers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/bloggers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}