Honeymooners A Cautionary Tale Read Free Page B

at home with babies,
like most of her college girl friends were. She wanted a brick
house. She wanted furniture of her own. Their rented life had run
its course with her. Jim’s doggone dream of becoming a famous
writer was dragging her down. Jim had been a Stanford lecturer two
years and had published a novel, so if he got off his butt he
could surely secure some promising teaching position for the
following fall and begin supporting his family like the husbands of
her college girl friends did. Meanwhile, they should take advantage
of their insurance benefits and the facilities at Stanford.
Stanford had an advanced medical program in artificial insemination
techniques, Judy informed Jim, and she announced that she had
talked with a doctor at the clinic on campus that very
day.
    They were sitting at the
kitchen table talking after a dinner of squabs stuffed with liver,
bacon, and wild rice, a side dish of French stringbeans, Belgian
endive salad, and ambrosia served in scooped and scalloped lemon
halves. From earlier phone-call comments, Jim had suspected some
relationship shit was going to hit the fan that evening, and Jim, a
henpecked former tough guy, had slaved over dinner in a tizzy. Now
Judy took several pamphlets from her purse and pushed them across
the table in front of Jim. Then she handed Jim a small plastic
jar.
     
    Well, how was dinner,
honeybunch? Jim asked Judy. —Do you think that stuffing was too
dry? What about that currant jelly, did that hit the spot? Judy
told Jim dinner was dandy and she was stuffed to the gills, and
then she told him to read this literature on artificial
insemination before the doctor’s appointment she had scheduled for
him the following Tuesday. He’s a real nice doctor, Judy had told
Jim. —You’ll like him. He makes you feel real relaxed, she said.
The little plastic jar had Jim’s name typed on a label taped to its
side. It was for a sample of Jim’s sperm, which would be analyzed
to determine his sperm count, Judy explained. Jim would have to
time things right, because he had to get his sperm sample to the
clinic by a certain deadline after he did it. It? Jim had asked
Judy. It, Judy said, and wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. Judy
told Jim she would accompany him herself, except she would be out
of town next Tuesday. You’ll like this doctor, she repeated. —I
told him, she said, that we had sex about twice a week. I read in
Cosmopolitan that sex twice a week is about average for a normal
couple our age. In case he asks you, too, so we’ll have our stories
straight.
     
    Sex! Jim hooted and hopped
up from the kitchen table. —Twice a week! Who says that’s any of
that bastard’s business in the first place? Jim inquired as he
snapped open a beer he had grabbed from the refrigerator; it foamed
over his hand onto the floor and he tossed it into the kitchen
sink. —Our stories straight! Christ, we’re not applying for a
fucken loan. That sumbitch better not ask me nothing like that if
he knows what’s good for him! Jim informed Judy as with shaky hands
he filled his Mickey Mouse Club collectible glass to the brim with
vodka. Normal couple! Jim said. —What’s that supposed to mean? And
how can you spring something like this on me, anyway?
     
    You’re the so-called writer
around here, Judy reminded Jim. —You know what normal is supposed
to mean, all right. And if you don’t, well, buddy, go look it up in
your hundred-dollar Webster’s Dictionary. And you’re a fine one to
talk about somebody springing something on somebody. You owe me,
buster, Judy reminded Jim. You better do this, she said.
    So that next Tuesday found
Jim flopped naked as the day he was born in his darkened bedroom
with his sorry member in his hand, watching the soundless
television’s blue light flicker on the ceiling. Jim thought of
light escaping from our world off into cold space, reaching
someplace new forever. Jim wagged his limp, sore penis like a
little fishing pole. He looked