for him to accept how much money I had spent if he saw that there was something in it for him.
I lay down on our bed, my mind still racing, as I flicked the pink sleeve back and forth in my hands hearing it flop and crackle with each whack of my palm.
How did a night of a few drinks, some racy underwear and a bunch of vibrating toys suddenly force my eyes wide open?
Why was it that suddenly something didn’t feel right anymore?
I’d only had sex with two other men before Manny. My first boyfriend Jonathan was a cook in the university cafeteria. He was a soft-hearted romantic that doted on me, constantly professing his love. I was so convinced that my mother would die from a heart attack if I brought home the kitchen staff that I ended our brief love affair before it really got a chance to start. I met Nick in my second year of university. I was enamoured with him from the moment I saw his large muscular frame and heard his deep booming voice. Despite all my efforts, I never felt secure enough in his love to justify the wrath I would get from my mother because I had fallen in love with a ghora. When we broke up, I lost all hope I would ever meet anyone, until Manny came along.
I looked over at the alarm clock on the side dresser: 12:09 a.m. Just as I started to panic about whether my husband was dead or alive, I heard a key in the door downstairs.
Chapter 3
The fussing downstairs was all too familiar. I heard the click of the door locking and the sound of Manny opening the foyer closet to put his shoes neatly in their place on the shoe tree inside. He had a thing about shoes in the doorway and never liked to come home to see anyone’s slippers or boots in the entrance. The closet door closed followed by the sound of his bare feet shuffling across the wooden floors until they were muffled by the beige carpet in the living room. He went into the kitchen, opened the fridge door and then closed it. I heard him pour a glass of water and then wash it out in the sink. I grew more and more anxious and even became a little agitated that he wasn’t rushing upstairs to see how my night went or if I had purchased anything.
I heard Manny shuffle some of the mail on the island in the kitchen until he finally thumped his way up the stairs to our bedroom. I had left the French doors open but was still a bit surprised to suddenly see him standing in the doorway. There was my husband of five years with the face I had lain beside for all that time and with the body I had come to know every inch of and suddenly I was more nervous at that moment than I had been our first time together.
“Hey baby,” he said with his usual warm grin. “Did you have fun tonight?”
I tried not to read too much into his question. Was he making polite conversation because he thought I probably wouldn’t buy anything? Was he trying not to embarrass me in case I did buy something? Did he forget that I went to a sex party?
“Yeah, I had fun tonight.” My gaze directed him to the sex sleeve lying on the top of the bedcover.
“I hate driving George around!” He stripped off his clothes ignoring my gaze and what I thought was a fairly provocative tilt of the head. “What part of being the designated driver means I have to drive him to the grocery store to get eggs for tomorrow? Just going to jump in the shower and rinse off the stink, okay baby?”
Within seconds Manny was in the shower, his sweaty clothes in the hamper, his pyjamas out of their drawer and waiting for his freshly washed body. I started to feel my blood boil. Maybe his normal behaviour would have been fine if it had been one of my regular Saturday nights staying at home stuffing myself while I read or rented movies. But this was no regular Saturday night!
I heard the faucet turn off and watched him shake the water from his ears and inspect his nose for errant hair before he finally flopped down in his wet towel on the duvet next to me.
“What’s this?” He picked up the tube in his hand.
Waiting for him to finish his shower, I went from nervous anxiousness to irritable anger to suddenly being caught off guard.
“It’s uh…” What do I say? How do you put something like that?
It’s a sleeve for your cock, dear. Or a warm blanket for your dick? What had Mahjong called it during the party? Pocket something. Pocket rocket? Pocket Pita? What was it called again?
“We won the game, eh?” Manny said excitedly. “You should have seen it! There was hardly any time left and suddenly out of nowhere Rodriguez totally scores on their team and after that, it was bam, bam, bam we had three goals!”
It was all too much to absorb at once. My night had some sort of surreal quality to it which was only enhanced by the image of my husband excitedly recanting details of a hockey game while unconsciously squeezing and smacking a pink sex toy in his hand.
Deep down, under the anxiousness and anger, I was starting to feel hurt that Manny seemed more excited to talk about his game than my night in a room full of drunken screaming women and vibrators.
“You won? That’s great Manny,” I said with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. “Won? No baby, we didn’t just win, we pulverized them! I think Marcus even tore his leg up again.”
“That’s horrible!”
“He’s a dick,” Manny said. “Don’t worry about him. No one likes him on the team. Hey, what is this thing anyway?” He looked down at the pink sleeve still in its plastic wrap and gave it a tentative squeeze.
“Well… speaking of dicks…” I said, trying to make a clever segue.
“What?” he said with alarm. “This is a fake dick? You bought a fake dick?”
“No, no! It’s more of a sleeve actually.” I was mortified. This wasn’t how I had pictured things going at all. He hadn’t even kissed me hello yet.
Manny studied the outside plastic casing, inspected the ridges on the side and squeezed open the hole at the top. “Oh! I get it!” he said. “It goes on my dick.” He sat on the edge of the bed with the pink sleeve flopping back and forth between his hands.
I would have paid a million dollars to know what was going on in his mind at that moment.
“What did you get yourself?”
He smiled warmly at me and started a step by step routine I had grown accustomed to over the years. One: Towel gets hung up damp on the side of the tub. Two: Pyjama top goes on before boxers and pyjama bottoms. Three: Teeth get brushed. Four: Slippers are left neatly at the edge of the bed. Five: Pillow is removed from under his head and placed at the foot of the bed. In ten minutes, he would be snoring.
He was half-way through brushing his teeth when he popped his head out of the bathroom and shouted, “What did you buy, Lee?”
“Just some stuff. And I bought some other stuff too.” I paused to see if he was going to say anything or press for more details. When he didn’t, I made my dramatic declaration in a voice barely above a whisper. “And I bought a toy too. For me.”
“What?” he asked turning off the faucet. “I couldn’t hear you. I had the water running.” He shut the bathroom light and sat down on the bed. He lined up his slippers by the edge of the bed. “What did you say baby?” he said, stifling a yawn.
From the fatigued and exhausted look on his face, I could tell that sex wasn’t going to happen. And sadly, for the first time, I was really ready for it. I was in fact so anxiously anticipating it that I found myself deeply disappointed when I realized it wasn’t going to happen.
“I just bought a few things,” I said in a low voice. “Do you want to see them now? You look kinda tired.” “I am, Lee. If I didn’t have to drive George to the grocery store on top of everything else, I wouldn’t be so late.” He took the pillow out from under his head and placed it past his feet. I stared at the five-year-old symbol at the edge of the bed that signalled it was time for sleep.
“I understand Manny. Goodnight.”