All You Could Ask For A Novel - By Mike Greenberg Page 0,27
with gentleness and quiet. The musical accompaniment, in my mind, has always been classical: Mozart is sexy, Tchaikovsky is sexy. Beethoven is not. Beethoven wrote music to march to. Mozart wrote music to make love to. I even use those words all the time; Scott and I could sneak downstairs while the kids are watching television and do it with me bent over the washing machine and I would still describe it as making love. And that is all well and good, making love always has and always will have its place. But as of today, I realize it is not the only option. There is a rock-’n’-roll way of going about this as well. There is a Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Quiet Riot way of going about it. I didn’t actually have sex with anyone today, but while I was rocking out—fully naked—with Pamela snapping photos and shouting encouragement and offering the occasional shot of tequila, there is no doubt in my mind I had an orgasm. It was in my mind and in my spirit, but let me tell you, it was every bit as good as having one anywhere else.
Pamela felt it too. “I feel like we’re fucking!” she shouted to me, over the whir of a blowing fan and Janis Joplin’s scratchy vocals.
The truth is, I never use that word. Not in that context, anyway. I use the F-word, occasionally, as an expletive. What the fuck happened to my car keys? What a fucking mess Megan’s room is. I really don’t give a fuck how big her earrings are. Those are all perfectly acceptable usages. But just to say We’re fucking? I would never, not in a million years. How graphic, vulgar. How ugly that sounds to me.
Or it did until today. Today was different. Today, when Pamela said it, and as I let it rattle around in my mind, it didn’t sound dirty anymore. It sounded sexy.
So that’s what I learned today, about sex and about myself. I learned that sex doesn’t have to be sweet and romantic. It doesn’t have to be about love, at least not all the time. Sex can be about power, and rock ’n’ roll. It can be about fucking. Sometimes that’s okay.
Then my phone rang.
Again, I had given strict instructions to Lourdes not to call unless there was an emergency. Had the phone rung and her number appeared after three o’clock, I would have been concerned, but it was only noon when she called. The kids were still in school. Had anything happened to them, the school would be calling, not Lourdes.
“Answer this, please,” I said to Pamela, tossing her the phone. “Unless it’s a true emergency I don’t even want to know why she’s calling.”
Pamela answered the phone and I started to dance. I did not want to let the moment get away. I liked it here, in this sexy, boozy, rockin’ reality.
“Sweetie, I think you need to take this,” Pamela said, a funny look on her face.
I flopped down on the couch and crossed my arms over my chest. “You have got to be kidding me,” I said, pouting. Pamela tossed the phone over and it landed on my bare thigh. I picked it up.
“Hello?”
“Mrs. Brooke!” It was Lourdes and she was shouting. “I am in the emergency room!”
I sat up, suddenly sober despite a bellyful of Patrón.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I was cleaning and a Wiggles bobblehead fell off a shelf and I think it broke my toe!”
“Oh my gosh, which one?”
“I think it was Jeff!”
“No, I mean which toe?”
She was distracted then. I heard voices. Someone else was speaking to her.
“What’s that, Mrs. Brooke?” she asked.
“I said I want to know which toe is broken, not which Wiggle fell on it.”
Lourdes didn’t answer. She was distracted again. I heard the voices in the background.
“Lourdes,” I said, more loudly. “Are you all right?”
“Mrs. Brooke, they are calling me in to see the doctor,” she said. “I’m sorry but I won’t be able to pick the kids up at school!”
And then the line went dead. I could feel tears welling in my eyes as I looked up and found, to my surprise, that Pamela was crying too.
“You have to go, don’t you,” she said. She pulled a woolen blanket off an armchair and spread it over me, then plopped down beside me on the couch. “Damn, that was fun.”
I laughed a little. “Thank you,” I said, and kissed her on the cheek.