Ken also curses like a sailor (even in front of children, and not just our children, either) and never fails to shoot me a smart-ass one-liner whenever I acknowledge any of his gracious gestures. And somehow, he manages to be both the most handsome and most humble man in any room.
I want to take him with me everywhere. I want us to live a hundred years and die at the same time. I want them to mix our cremated remains together, dump us into a river, and watch our mingled ashes swirl like coffee creamer all the way to the ocean. I want our souls (okay, my soul and his, whatever he has, operating system?) to find each other on the other side as soon as possible just so that we can fall in love and make more babies and do it all over again.
I just also want him to fuck my brains out.
It’s a beautiful life Ken has given me, one filled with security and laughter and intelligent conversation and honeymoons in Paris and well-behaved children with long attention spans and cute noses and his-and-hers sinks and 401(k)s and well-manicured lawns. I just wish the orgasms matched the drapes, if you know what I mean. And I wish the drapes had my name tattooed on them somewhere highly visible and brazenly unprofessional.
Is that so much to ask?
Hansel and Metal
December 14
Between his height, bone structure, unruly black hair, and giant, left-leaning cock, Hans could totally have been a body double for Tommy Lee in that Pamela Anderson sex tape—if it weren’t for all the tattoo discrepancies, that is. He was a sensitive, romantic soul camouflaged by the body and attire of a six-foot-three-inch heavy-metal bassist with a raging case of ADHD. Bless His Heart, as I’ve taken to calling him, might have ruined me for everyone.
That motherfucker would tell me I was beautiful every day—with sincerity, and eye contact, and a gentle caress of my cheek with his giant callous man hands. He would buy me big, ostentatious bouquets of flowers—for no reason. He would hold my hand—in public. He’d paint my toenails while we watched Sex and the City. And whenever Mr. and Mrs. Oppenheimer were out of town, Hans would drag a TV into their opulent master bathroom so that we could soak in the clam-shaped splendor of their garden tub as Leeloo and Korben Dallas fell in love all over again.
Hans was also every bit as distractible and impulsive as I described him in that bullshit journal entry I left for Ken to find. In fact, the part about him veering off course due to a bunch of twinkling lights was based on actual events. It was a steamy summer night, much like the one in the story, and we were driving across a dam near Bless His Heart’s parents’ house. Before we could make it to the other side, BHH slammed on the brakes, lurched his ancient BMW over to the shoulder of the bridge, yanked me out of the car, and plopped us both down on the guardrail, doing his patented twirl-me-in-the-air-and-set-me-down-sideways-on-his-lap move along the way. I held on to his big shoulders for dear life, thinking this crazy tattooed motherfucker was about to jump into the lake.
At that point, nothing would have surprised me. I’d learned pretty quickly that, with Hans, all I could do was just hang on and enjoy the ride.
When I finally realized I was not about to plummet twenty-five feet into the churning, blackened water below, I looked up and saw what had him so enraptured. The surface of the lake looked as if someone had taken the night sky and spread it out like a picnic blanket before us. A million crystalline points of light billowed and swayed below while a million more floated just out of reach in the thick summer air above. I wanted to stay there forever, but BHH’s emorection wouldn’t allow it.
Eventually, we retreated to the car where we spent the next hour and a half cuddling, gazing into each other’s souls, and making love while Jimmy Eat World competed with the sound of rushing water plummeting below us. It felt as though we were in our own personal snow globe of ecstasy, only the white flecks swirling around us weren’t snowflakes but stars. Stars everywhere—in the sky, on the water, splashed in ink across his skin and in my eyes as they rolled heavenward on a crest of pleasure.
The only thing that prevented that