My wife and husband

I was originally against the idea of my wife bringing home a second husband for herself, but she talked me into it. I would still be the only legal husband, and she said he would be able to help around the house and with the kids and whatnot (we had no kids, but if one day we did decide to have kids, he would be there to help, even though we had already decided we were never going to have kids). Or I'm not sure I was talked into it so much as she brought him home and I didn't see the point of raising a big fuss about it.

The three of us make a point to eat dinner together every night. We take turns cooking. I usually cook on Tuesday and Friday, though a lot of the time David (the other husband) will ask me to trade my Friday for his Saturday and I'm usually OK with that (I think he likes to have his whole Saturdays off, whereas I'm tired on Friday when I get home from work and don't mind at all cooking on my day off in exchange for just relaxing on Friday night).

"Would you die for me, if it meant that I would live?"

"No. No I would not. Because being without you would be more painful than death, and so I would not force you to live without me, because--"

"BORING."

"Because that would mean you--"

"BOOOOOOORRRRINNNNGGG."

"You're being boring."

On most nights, my wife (Lauren) sleeps in the bed with David in the bedroom, and I sleep either in the guest room or the living room on the couch. I don't like this, and I make a point of complaining about it, but real subtle-like, I drop it in conversation. They just roll their eyes at me. They tell me I get my chances to sleep in the bed--and I do, when David has a cold and he has to sleep in the guest room or the living room on the couch, I sleep in the bedroom with Lauren, and when Lauren has a cold, I sleep in the bedroom with David. One night I asked if I could sleep in there with the two of them--that's all I wanted, was to sleep at the foot of the bed with the two of them (not really, but that's how I presented it, so that they might be more likely to allow me in), but they just shut the door without saying anything.

David works in Louisville, Kentucky, for a manufacturer of farming products. He has to leave at 4:30 every morning because it is about a four hour flight. I work at a surf shop by the coast called "Hang Tens," which I own and which I started when I was out of college with some friends of mine who have all left the business now, leaving me in complete control. I have never been surfing.

"I like what you've done with the bathroom."

"Really?"

"Yeah, I like the greens."

"The greens weren't my first choice, it was more by a process of elimination."

"What do you mean?"

"Well at first I was going to make it yellow, but then I painted the kitchen yellow--"

"Right."

"And then I was going to go for a red or pink--"

"Mmm hmm."

"I think that might have been nice."

"Yeah."

"A strong red, maybe, but I chickened out."

"Ha ha."

thisisbrutal

"So then I just thought green and by then I thought, well I just have to pick a color some day, right?"

"Ha ha. Yeah."

thisisbrutal

"So I said, what the heck, green it is!"

"Well it looks fantastic."

"Thank you."

"It really--it matches your towels."

"Oh, well I bought those towels."

"Oh, did you? I thought you'd already had those towels."

"No, my towels were like a cream color."

"Oh, right."

"Or a yellowish--I don't know."

"Yeah, yeah, I know what you're talking about now, I remember those towels."

"They were awful!"

"Ha ha."

"That was the best part of the whole thing, throwing away those ugly towels!"

"That was the whole excuse for the whole thing, wasn't it?"

"Ha ha right right."

"No, it looks great, though, honestly."

"Well thank you. Do you have anything to say?"

"..."

"?"

"?"

(passes out)

"Oh jeez, I tell ya."

"I know, I know. Have I showed you the closets?"

"Oh, did you do something with the closets?"

"The hall closets, yes, I cleaned them all out."

"Oh, wow."

"Yeah, it took me all afternoon."

"I can imagine, but--oh, this is much better."

"Yeah, I thought so. Now the towels are all together--"

"Oh, I was looking for a pillowcase the other day."

"I'm sorry!"

"No, no!"

"Well here they are."

"It's all here, that's great, that's so much easier."

"Yeah, it should be."

"The closet is bigger than I realized."

"Well we had so many boxes back there, they were taking up the whole closet."

"Where'd you put all the boxes?"

"Uh, most of them in the guest room. Just for now."

"Right."

"I figure I'll either move them into the attic or probably into the basement."

"Uh huh."

"I mean most of it is just old junk, we could go through it one afternoon and just figure out what we want to keep and what we want to toss."

"We should. We should."

"I AM GOING TO DIE BY MY OWN HAND."

"Well look who's awake."

"I AM GOING TO DIE BY MY OWN HAND."

"What do you want, do you want your bottle?"

"I AM GOING TO DIE BY MY OWN HAND."

"I'm going to put him in his crib, maybe he'll go to sleep."

One day Lauren told me that she and David were planning to move without me--the plan was to be that David would fly off in his plane and I would drive off to work, but David wouldn't be on his way to Kentucky, he'd be circling the neighborhood waiting for me to drive off so he could land and the two of them would move secretly while I was at work and I would be able to keep the house, but they would take all the stuff and when I would get home the house would be empty and that would be that--maybe they'd write every now and then or send me Christmas cards, but for the most part, that would be that. But they'd decided against it, because they didn't think it would be fair to me, the legal husband, so they figured I could just get an apartment downtown and I could visit my house anytime I wanted to, and sometimes I'd be allowed to sleep in the bedroom when one of them had a cold or a stomach flu but otherwise I'd have an apartment of my own where I would sleep most every night and how did that sound? I asked if they were trying to push me out because Lauren didn't love me anymore, and she said quite matter-of-factly that she had never loved me, and that she didn't love David, that she wasn't sure she was capable of love (am I imagining this?), so that was really quite irrelevant to the question. I asked what was relevant, and they didn't want to answer.

I asked if I could consult my lawyer. They agreed. I called David (my lawyer) on his cell phone and he picked up on the first ring. Hello, he said. Hello, I said, I'm being kicked out of my house. Do I have any sort of legal recourse. Hmm, David said, I'll have to examine the case. Do you have the legal paperwork? I haven't been presented with any kind of legal paperwork, I said. Well, we can't do anything if you haven't signed any kind of official paperwork, he said. I looked into his eyes, trying to see if he was lying. What should I do until then? Don't do anything, he advised. As soon as we give you the paperwork, fax it over to me, and I'll tell you what you should do.

"Where are we?"

"We're in the hospital."

"What happened?"

"You had an accident."

"An accident?"

"Well--"

"WUHL. WUHL. WUHL."

"Excuse me?"

"It's WELL. With an E. That's how educated people pronounce it. You're saying WUHL WUHL WUHL."

"Why are you being like this? Why are you being like this?"

"An accident?"

One time we went twenty-two days without laughing. We chuckled, occasionally, at the television, or smiled and went like "FFFHHH" in a sort of laughing-sound when one of us had a witty remark that wasn't really funny at all, but no real laughing for twenty-two days.

More than twenty-two days, actually, because it was the twenty-second day that I said we hadn't laughed in twenty-two days, and then we didn't laugh that day or for a while after that, but the point was, on the twenty-second day, I said we haven't laughed for twenty-two days. So what, Lauren said, and yeah, so what, David said. I frowned. Adults don't laugh, Lauren said, what's the point? It is childish, David agreed. Or not childish, Lauren said, but... We are capable of so much more, David said. I prefer flatness, David said. I turned on the stovetop and waited for it to heat up and then set my hand right on the stovetop, the idea being to hold it there until my hand sort of melted into the stove, but it was too hot, and I pulled it off right away, then went to bed in the guest room.