Troubles and Treats (3 page)

“What else you got,” I ask Jim as the line powers up and I pull my hydraulic drill
down from its perch on the shelf above my head.

“Well, you could always ask your dad to tail her.  Maybe she’s hiding something from
you,” Jim says nonchalantly before he walks off to his meeting.

My dad is a private investigator who specializes in cheating spouses and workman’s
comp fraud.  Since I am fairly certain there is no way Jenny was guilty of
one
of those, it leaves the other a distinct possibility.

Oh my gosh, could this really be the problem?  Why didn’t I ever think about this
before?

I am immediately appalled that my sweet, loving Jenny could do something like this
and that she's been lying to me this whole time.

Why hasn’t she told me?  Why, God, WHY?

The reason my wife doesn’t want to have sex with me anymore is because she has a fake
injury she never told me about and now she is trying to milk her boss, Claire, out
of money to pay for her fake recuperation.

“Wait, Drew installed a baby rocker to the ceiling?  That doesn’t sound right,” Claire
says as she signs the stack of invoices I've printed out for her.

When I had lost my job seven years ago at the computer design company I worked at
since college, my best friend Claire asked me to help out at her chocolate shop that
she shared with my other best friend Liz.  After a few months of handling all of the
marketing and computer design for her, I had found another job but still helped Claire
out when I could.  After Veronica was born, I knew I didn’t want to do the whole nine
to five thing anymore.  Claire had asked me to work full time and Liz had begged me
to help her as well. 

It’s been three years and I am now the marketing manager of Seduction and Snacks,
which has grown by leaps and bounds.  A few years ago, Claire and Liz had decided
to turn their business venture into a franchise.  There are now ten Seduction and
Snacks stores located throughout the south.

Or is it west?  I can never remember.  I’m not good at geology…or genealogy…or that
other thing that starts with a “g” and ends in a “y”.

  Luckily, since Claire and Carter have two kids, Liz and Jim have three, and Drew
and I have two, we are all very family-oriental.  The kids are all at the shop at
some point during the week, and I can work from home whenever I need to, making up
my own hours as I go along.

“Yes!  It was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.  It was like these straps that almost
look like seat belts and they hung down from the ceiling and I could sit right in
it and hold Billy.  There were these weird hole things made out of the straps that
you were supposed to stick your legs in I guess, but I didn’t get what the point of
those were for so I didn’t use them.  And it didn’t really have a back on it so I
just leaned against the wall when I wasn’t rocking.  You should have seen how quickly
I got Billy to fall back to sleep.  It was awesome,” I explain as I take the signed
invoices and start scanning them into the computer.

“Good morning, hookers!” Liz states as she breezes through the connecting door of
Seduction and Snacks and takes a seat on the small couch in the office.  “Did you
get a chance to print out the order that’s coming in next week?  I need to make sure
I got enough strawberry gag reflex gel.  I swear to God, I think Mrs. Molnar drinks
that shit like water.  Either that or she just needs buckets of numbing gel to get
Big Balled Bob’s one huge nut down her throat.”

We all shudder at the though of Mr. Molnar and his penis.  He had come into Liz’s
store a few weeks ago to tell us about his open heart surgery and somehow ended up
showing us not only the scar that ran down the middle of his chest but the effect
the anesthesia had on his junk.  One of his balls swelled to four times its normal
size.  It had looked like a grapefruit hugging a toothpick with a sad, lonely prune
stuck to the side.

“Can we please not talk about Big Balled Bob this early in the morning?  I had a good
night last night and want to baste in the glory of it,” I tell them.

“Bask.  It’s BASK in the glory,” Liz corrects me.

“Oh whatever.  You know what I meant.”

People are always teasing me because I get words wrong.  I’m really not a dumb person. 
I know what I want to say in my brain, but by the time it travels to my mouth it usually
gets mixed up.

“So what happened last night after your lame-ass left us at the bar?” Liz questions. 
“Wait!!  Oh my gosh!  I totally know what happened, you little slut!  Drew finally
gave you his present, didn’t he?”

I look at Liz in confusion.

“How did you know about the present Drew got me?” I ask.

“Duh!  He bought it from me,” Liz says as she
gets up from the couch to
pick
up a piece of
paper from the printer and look
it over.

“Wait, that was yours?  Did you use it with all three girls?  I don’t remember you
mentioning it,” I ask as I power down the computer.

“What the fuck are you talking about?  What girls?”

“Uh, your
daughters
?  What other girls would I be talking about?”

And Liz thinks I’M the dumb one.

Liz sets the paper down on the desk and puts her hands on her hips.

“Why in the hell would I ever use something like that with my daughters?  That’s gross,”
she states.

Gross?  Why the hell would it be gross?

“Oh my Jesus,” Claire mutters, covering her mouth with her hand and staring at me
with wide eyes.

And then she starts laughing uncontrollably.  She bends over at the waist and wraps
her arms around her stomach.

“Oh God!  I can’t!  Oh Jesus, it hurts!” she says through her snorts and giggles.

“What the hell is so funny?” I demand.

“Yes, enlighten us, Claire,” Liz states seriously.  “A swing like the one Drew gave
Jenny is no laughing matter.  That thing is top of the line.  He shelled out a lot
of cash for that thing.”

“Holy hell!  This is the best day EVER!” Claire laughs as she finally stands backup
and wipes the tears from her eyes.

“Why did you say it was gross?  What is gross about a baby rocker?  Did someone puke
on it or something?” I ask Liz.  “You didn’t feed the girls naked on it or anything,
did you?”

This just throws Claire into more fits of laughter and causes Liz to stare at me with
a horrified look on her face.

“Oh dear God.  Please tell me you didn’t.  No…just...no,” she says.

What the hell is everyone’s problem?  This was the sweetest thing Drew did for me
in a long time and they’re laughing at it.

“I don’t even want to tell you now.  You’re just going to make fun of Drew for being
so thoughtful,” I complain.

“Oh, no.  You have to tell Liz just how
thoughtful
Drew was.  Please.  Please tell Liz how super your evening was after you left us. 
Say it slowly and don’t leave anything out,” Claire begs with a huge smile on her
face.

I roll my eyes at how ridiculous the two of them are acting about a baby rocker.

“Fine.  But not a word out of either of you.”

They both pretend to zip their lips and throw the key away.

“You guys know how tired I was when I left the bar last night.  Billy still isn’t
sleeping through the night and it takes me forever to get him back to sleep.  So,
when I got home, Drew told me he had a surprise for me upstairs.  I thought it would
be another one of his lame excuses to try and have sex.”

Claire snorts and then plays it off like she’s choking when I shoot her a dirty look.

“I get upstairs and of course Billy chose that moment to wake up crying.  I got him
out of his crib and walked over to our room and saw that Drew lit a bunch of candles. 
I’ve been complaining about how the nightlight we have is too dark to see by when
I feed Billy in the middle of the night and the candles were just perfect.  I walked
over to the corner of the room where I have the glider so I could rock him and in
its place was a baby rocking swing that hung from the ceiling,” I finish, giving both
of them a smug look.

Let’s see them make fun of Drew now.  My husband is a giant man-child, but sometimes
he does sweet, unexpected things.  It’s been awhile since he’s done them but this
makes up for it.

I stare at Liz expectantly, waiting for her to apologize for being rude.

“Hold on a second.  I need a minute,” Liz says as she grabs Claire’s elbow and turns
so that they both face away from me.

I roll my eyes at their backs.

“It’s not working.  I can see your shoulders shaking.  I know you guys are laughing.”

The girls compose themselves and turn back around, trying to keep straight faces.

“So, you guys didn’t have sex last night?” Liz questions in confusion.

“No!  I told you, I was tired and then Billy woke up when I got home.  But oh my God,
that rocker was THE BEST!  He went right back to sleep, and I actually fell asleep
in it too.  Now I know why you never told me about it when the girls were babies. 
You were afraid I’d try and steal it from you.  No wonder they were such good little
sleepers.”

Liz nods her head and closes her eyes, holding one hand up in the air as if to say,
“STOP!”

“Sorry, I think I need another minute,” she says before mimicking Claire’s earlier
pose and bending over at the waist to guffaw at the ground.

“What the hell?” I yell.

“I think what Liz is trying to say is that you rocked your baby to sleep in a SEX
swing,” Claire says with a giggle.

I stare at her blankly.

“A.  SEX.  SWING.  From the Latin words, ‘you are supposed to fuck in it, not rock
your kid to sleep’,” Claire states.

“What she said!” Liz laughs as she stands back up and then covers her eyes with her
hands.  “Oh highway to heaven, I can’t even look at you right now!”

Oh.  My.  God.

“I rocked my son to sleep in something that people bang in?” I whisper in a horrified
voice.

“Well, yes.  That’s why it’s called a sex swing,” Claire offers.

“Did you actually put your thighs in the stirrups?” Liz laughs.

“Stirrups?  Oh my God.  I used those to hold the extra bottles,” I complain.

“Oh God, here we go again!” Claire says, bending over and laughing so hard she starts
dry heaving.  “I’M GOING TO PUKE!” she yells in between heave-laughs.

“I hate both of you.  You are both jerks.”

I feel awful.  Not just because my friends are jerks, but because my husband had tried
to do something kinky and fun and I ruined it.

What the hell is wrong with me?

I used to be fun and outgoing and kinky as hell.  Me, of all people, should know what
a sex swing is.  I had made a mold of my vagina and gave it to Drew on one of our
anniversaries for God’s sake.  We had even made an amateur sex video and submitted
it to YouPorn.  Without our faces of course.  There are certain things my grandma
should never see.  Although why my grandmother would be on YouPorn when she’s clearly
over the age of legally having sex is beyond me.  Isn’t seventy when they say you
have to pass a test to keep having sex?  Or maybe that’s for your driver’s license. 
No, I’m pretty sure it’s for sex.  Regardless, a sex swing is something I should have
first-hand knowledge of.

Stuff like this has been happening more and more lately, Drew attempting to spark
something between us, and me not knowing what to do or having no interest in it. 
My friends have the most perfect marriages and sex lives, and they were able to raise
their kids while doing it.  Drew and I had managed to do pretty well after Veronica
was born a little over three years ago.  Our marriage strengthened and we had sex
all the time.  As soon as I got pregnant with Billy, though, everything stopped. Suddenly,
I had to juggle a toddler in potty training hell with a pregnancy that kept me puking
almost the entire time and a full time job. 

It’s not that I don’t want my husband or don’t love him, sleep just takes priority.  
Even though the job is flexible, there's still a lot of work that needs to be done. 
Not to mention the fact that Drew works the night shift, and I'm stuck doing most
things alone in the evening. 

I never used to have any trouble getting up at four in the morning when he had come
home from work for a quickie.  I loved having sex with him while I was half asleep
and still warm from being under the covers half the night.  The first time he tried
it after I found out I was pregnant with Billy, I told him if he brought his penis
anywhere near me, I would tell all his friends about how he wore my silk thongs to
work because he liked how they slid through the crack of his ass when he bent over.
Any time after that when, he would get his penis within five feet of me, I would run
to the bathroom and throw up.  I was pretty sure he took defense to that.  It wasn't
my fault the sight of his penis made me sick to my stomach.  He has a very pretty
penis, actually, and I even drew a picture of it once.  There had just been something
about how it looked like a jellyfish with one eye that made me queasy. Once Billy
was born, I had just been too exhausted to even think about sex. 

             
Our son STILL doesn’t sleep through the night.  Right now, I just want a full night
of sleep more than I want sex.  Okay, I'll take that back.  I
do
want sex.  Just not at appropriate times.  Every time I want it, Drew’s either sleeping
or he’s at work.  It never happens when we’re in the same room together.  I can’t
even masturbate right anymore.  The last time I tried, I fell asleep with my vibrator
in my hand.  While it was still running.

Drew had come home from work and found me sprawled out in bed with my arm flung off
the side, clutching a big pink vibrator that was slowly losing juice.  Instead of
sounding like
wirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
, it sounded more like,
wirr-rrr-wirrrr-r……rr. 
I couldn’t help that the vibrations lulled me to sleep.  Now I knew why babies loved
their vibrating bouncy seats.  Drew got excited when I loaded up on double-A batteries
at the grocery store that week, and I made sure my nightstand was fully stocked with
them.  I was pretty sure I could hear him weeping in the bathroom when he found out
I just needed them so I could stick my vibrator under the mattress to help me fall
asleep faster.  At least I thought he was weeping.  He had made some really funny
sounds and when I had knocked on the bathroom door, he said he was busy reading.