365 Nights (23 page)

Now that Brad is no longer pretending to be interested in taking ballroom dance with me, he is either watching sports—or a movie about sports—or tracking sports online. In the old days before we got married, Brad was so wrapped up in the success of his three favorite teams that the core of his very happiness was deeply invested in wins and losses. He would be moody, quiet, and cranky if his teams lost. He would skulk around the house, muttering under his breath or calling his best friend to vent and scream. Before we met there were days where a particularly painful loss could keep him at home all day, unshaven and in a funk. Brad's old roommate claims he used to root for the Browns even though he was a Bears fan because Brad would “be insufferable at least through Wednesday.”

If his teams won, Brad would be ebullient, happy, and carefree. The world just seemed brighter to him. He would want to celebrate, to study every sportscast as they fawned over his team's victories, and to cruise the Internet to find glowing updates and to memorize stats. I mean, the energy and emotion Brad expended to follow not one, but three or even five, sports teams could fuel a small third-world country. Just imagine if he spent all that energy and emotion on me, it would be . . . well, it would probably be incredibly claustrophobic and cloying, so never mind that point.

My real point is before he had a wife and kids and a mortgage, Brad held sports in the center of what most women would consider a small, unhappy, and slightly pathetic life. A life for which most men probably pine and reminisce. Today, Brad works hard to keep his sports mania in check—he probably does a lot of his obsessing when I'm not around. But either way, today there is a discernible difference in the grip that sports has on his life. What's the diff? Well, not to beat a dead horse, but we do have that DVR, and a couple of growing kids who need his attention, and a wife who is trying to connect with him. All this encourages a good deal of personal growth, don't you think?

So today, we don't fight over the remote, and we don't keep score of who got to watch what last. And we never argue over what's more important—some meaningless baseball game or who gets voted off a reality show. This does not mean that we are saints and never argue, but it's primarily because we have a lot of televisions in our house (including one in the bedroom), and peace is kept simply by going to another room. Also, we've both realized that we have to keep our television viewing in check and under control, and to throw some hissy fit about the television would just be one giant step back. In our current house, the television sits at a funny angle in the bedroom and you can't change channels with the remote without sitting up and leaning out of the bed with your arm stretched out and around like a coat hanger antenna. It's simply too much work for me to watch television in bed, if you can believe it.

Brad and I have never been marital scorekeepers. This is due to several reasons. The first is that I have a terrible memory and my ability to track what Brad has and has not done required massive brainpower that has slowly oozed from my ears since the birth of my children. The second is that we have those handy job descriptions.

In fact, now that we're on the same team, so to speak, and aspiring to all things intimate, there is no need. I no longer have to note in the back of my head, “Well, I guess I'll have to give it up this weekend since it's been a while.” And Brad no longer has to count back the days or even weeks to locate the fading and distant memory of us rolling in the hay. Yes, the only things I'm counting are the days until this sex every day thing is over. While I am still committed to the overall arrangements, I must admit that the day-to-day mechanics are getting a tad bit old.

But sex should be a team sport, and I am indeed a member of Team Muller. Obviously, having sex alone is not as fun. But the more salient point is that Brad and I now have to work together to make sex work. A concept that, until now, was sadly foreign to me. It turns on its head the adversarial power play between spouses—men gaming on how to get it, and women gaming on how to get out of it. What if, gasp, Brad and I aspired to the same things sexually
for the rest of our lives
? Without even knowing it, our sex-every-day arrangement made us teammates. Would it stick? I wondered. Because to paraphrase Yogi Berra, from a woman's perspective, sex is 90 percent mental and the other half is physical. (He also famously said, “It ain't over 'til it's over”—but that's a reference for another chapter.) For men, I'd have to deduce that sex is 100 percent physical, and if there is a nice emotional connection, that's just gravy.

I've referenced sportsmanship and this is a good time to address the critical role that it plays in this intimacy-every-day arrangement. And while I've done my best to conduct myself in an appropriate manner behind closed doors, I'm amazed that this agreement has forced me to be a stellar player on and
off
the court. I am finding I must treat my teammate with respect, encourage him with a “good game” even when he didn't (if you get my drift), conduct myself with integrity, and abide by the rules with a good and fair attitude. It's not been impossible, but it has forced a kind of mindfulness.

For the most part, though, I've always considered myself a good sport. Like the time I ran against Roger Brown for Student Council. I voted for him in a terribly misguided gesture of goodwill and sportsmanship and he voted for . . . himself. You know where this is going—Roger Brown won . . . by
one vote
! “You don't deserve to win if you're not willing to vote for yourself. How stupid, ” he commented. Actually, I thought our votes would cancel out each other (like Brad and I often do when we vote on local bond issues), but it really was a stupid gesture of sportsmanship on my part that nearly ended my Student Council career.

Sportsmanship aside, Brad and most men struggle to keep their sports obsessions in check. Brad has to restrain himself from checking on his fantasy baseball team or the odds for the latest Ohio State game. Likewise, women have to keep their ex-man obsessions in check. Too much energy is spent on thinking, “I wonder what [INSERT NAME HERE] is doing right now?”

Thomas Wolfe said you can't go home again. Which is funny, because he and I share the same hometown and I go home a lot. Arguably, when he wrote that incredibly controversial, thinly veiled memoir that alienated everyone close to him, I would think it was indeed awkward to go home again. For me, I am happy and grateful to go home and always try to be nice to everyone there so that I am welcomed home again and again. But sometimes going home again is still awkward. First off, because you have friends there who never left. Or you have friends there who aren't really your friends anymore and you feel awkward running into them. Or you decide it's a good idea to call your ex-boyfriend from high school to see if he's coming to your twentieth high school reunion.

I know, I can't believe it either.

I went home to visit my parents and scheduled to meet my oldest friend, Marcie, for a drink. I worked my entire day to accommodate this evening out with her. I wore out the kids at the pool. I fed them early and I transitioned them to Brad so that I had enough time to take a leisurely shower and blow out my hair. I left the house and was off to meet Marcie at The Usual Suspects, a local bar on the other side of town. It was summer in the mountains and the weather was so gorgeous it deserved a special name, like breezi-abulous or something. I was relaxed, free, and clean—feelings that were hard to come by in those days. I was listening to the Eagles, basking in a peaceful, easy feeling.

I drove past my high school—a proud, impressive stone building that sits regally on a hill. I remembered my high school career—friends, beach trips, teachers, and of course, Alex, a high school boyfriend. We had a bad breakup—primarily because I thought I would marry Alex and he did not think he would marry me. Not exactly on the same page, the two of us. He was a nice guy, and as far as high school beaus are concerned, I did okay. “Hmmm,” I found myself thinking, “I wonder what he's doing now . . .” So I decided to find out. I called Information, and before I knew it, Information had connected me to Alex's home phone, and that phone was ringing.

This is a good time for me to share a few bits of advice for those folks who decide out of the blue to call an old boyfriend from high school. The first and most critical piece of advice is this:
Don't do it!
Forget about closure. Forget about fond memories. Forget about that lame excuse that he really cared about you and you want to know how he's doing. Forget that you are freshly bathed, driving across town with the windows down and feeling great. Just put down the phone and walk (or drive) away and meet your friends. It's just not going to go well. I promise.

I didn't call for closure. I had gotten that many years back when Alex had called to “check in” and hinted at a possible reunion. “Are you kidding me?” I screamed into the phone. “Really! After you totally hosed me for a college cheerleader and stomped all over me and left me for dead, now you want to check in?” I was lathered up, I mean this breakup was a major emotional setback that I was still recovering from. “Listen, Alex,” I fired into the phone. “I don't want you to ever call me again. In fact, I don't want you to ever ask my friends about me or even think about me—do you understand? We are so done.” There was a long pause.

“Well, you don't have to be such a bitch about it,” he finally said and hung up. That was some serious closure, girls. So in a way, I guess it was my turn to “reach out.”

If, however, you choose to ignore my first line of advice, please work through a few key elements before you dial.

You'd be right if you guessed that I was totally unprepared to address any of these questions. One of the curses of twenty-first -century technology is that it is nearly impossible to stalk and/or hang up on people without being found out or being terrified that you will be found out. So I was stuck.

“Hello?” a small, reedy voice asked.

Oh, crap. Critical Element No. 4: What will you do if someone other than your ex answers the phone? Oh, the clumsiness of it all.

“Um, hi, is your dad there?”

“You mean Daddy? Uh-huh, hang on.”

Wow, now everything was moving in slow motion. And it dawned on me as I cruised across town with the wind blowing in my hair that this was a royally bad idea. I won't even bore you with the details except to say that it took Alex forever to get to the phone because he was on his business line when I called, and when he picked up my call, he asked if he could call me right me back. And then I said no and he insisted yes and then I said no and we had this uncomfortable back-and-forth exchange until the caller on his other line actually hung up on him and suddenly he had all the time in the world. As if things could get any more awkward. I managed to find out that he worked in technology (I think that's what he said) and was married (that I'm sure of) with three sons (or maybe daughters), including a set of twins (from what I can recall). But this is what I did remember—he was not going to our twentieth high school reunion because (and I'm paraphrasing) “I got so knee-walking drunk at our tenth reunion I'm not sure anyone will talk to me this time around. I was hungover for days. Hell, it was awful.”

Well, there you have it.

I gave him a quick update on me (as if he really wanted to know), wished him well, hung up, and pressed down on the accelerator. I sat up straight in my seat, shaking my head as if to get rid of the mental picture of a slightly balding guy knee-walking drunk at our reunion and his wife having to lug him into a car. As I pulled into the parking lot of the bar, I realized I was sweating. So much for that peaceful easy feeling.

Marcie and her friends could not
believe
I called him. Marcie, my friend since practically birth, was impressed. “That took a lot of guts, sweetie. I'm proud of you—you should feel empowered.”

“Are you kidding me?” I said. “It was the most gawky, discombobulating thing I have brought upon myself in a long time. Can I still be a dork at thirty-nine? What was I thinking?”

Well, clearly, I still wasn't thinking when I got home because I couldn't wait to repeat the tale of my awkward phone encounter with Alex. My brother and mother were appalled. “You did that?” My dad laughed out loud—“Good for you, how is old Alex anyway?” My sister-in-law was indifferent—“Who's Alex?” But here's the kicker: Brad was peeved—“Why would you ever want to call an old boyfriend?” And really, I had no idea. For Brad, it's like watching José Mesa's blown save again. Why would he want to relive that kind of thing?

“I mean, what were you thinking when you decided to call Alex?” Brad asked me later that night as we were getting ready for bed.

“Clearly, hon, I wasn't thinking. Which is what makes the story so funny and painful.”

“Well, I don't find it funny, I think it's weird that you would want to call Alex after all these years. Would you approve of me calling an old flame?”

Well, it would depend. There is a big difference in my book between a high school girlfriend and a former fiancée. High school was, sadly, dog years ago . . . but a fiancée? Well, that was practically yesterday. So the same rules just don't apply. I guess I could probe deep, deep inside my psyche and come up with some explanation for why on that beautiful day I felt the need to call my high school boyfriend. But I don't think there is any explanation. I think, for once, it is what it is. “Well, there's nothing really to it,” I answered. “And if there were anything to it, I wouldn't have shared it with the world and I certainly wouldn't have told you.”