Canthook

Jack, who was a friend when I lived in Columbus, once told me he had practiced safe sex since the 1960s. "I never gave 'em my correct name."

I suppose that's one way to look at "safe sex." Using barrier methods, so that there's no exchange of bodily fluids, is another. Worries about pregnancy and disease, though, are piddlin' little matters. If you really want to be safe, you need to wear a bullet-proof vest around your heart.

Groundhog's Day

To many people, Monday will be Groundhog's Day, also known as Candlemas, a ritual that decides whether there will be fully six more weeks of winter, or only a month and a half more. To Bill Murray fans, it will be an opportunity to watch a curious movie that says no matter how many times you fuck things up, you still have a chance to nail it. To me, well, it would have been Em's 65th birthday.

I spoke on the phone today to Jasper, and to my four-year-old great-grandson. Jasper's had a, uh. colorful life so far. Em was first hospitalized for lupus 2 weeks before Jasper was born, so he never knew a healthy mom, only one that was dying, and there have been a lot of bumps along life's highway for him since, just one thing after another, but listening to him play with his grandson, he seemed so happy. Em and I wanted so much to give Jasper a head start in life, and he's had anything but, yet it seems like he ended up where she and I wanted him.

A Day Long Ago

Jasper and I had gone to the Children's Zoo in Franke Park that day, for about 90 minutes. The wonderful thing about living close was that we could get an annual membership, and drop in frequently for as little as 30 minutes. When it's a big hassle to get there, you go infrequently, and you try to get your money's worth out of the day's admission, so fatigue sets in, and ruins things. We liked to go visit the lemurs, or the wallabys, or the jackass penguins.

Afterwards, we went to pick Em from work. Jasper waited in the car, and I went in to tell her we were there. She wasn't quite ready to leave, so I sat and waited. And then Jerry came in.

A Loud Thump

They probably heard the noise from three miles away. My jaw gaped, and the thump was my tongue hitting the floor. Jerry was a... looker. She was one of the most striking beauties I've ever seen.

Her shapely legs seemed to go all the way to her armpits. She had a lavish portion of luxurious blonde hair reaching down to her bosom in soft curls. Her eyes were light green and you could swim in them. She was wearing a red sweater, and had a chest that, well, there are women with big breasts and women with nicely-shaped breasts, and lots and logs of women with fairly flat chests. Jerry's were ample without being garganuan, nicely shaped, and she could have sold thousands of sweaters.

Em looked at me and laughed. I pulled my tongue off the floor and put it back in my mouth.

That's Tom's Wife

Em stood up, and grabbed a file folder from her desk. She walked over and gave it to Jerry, and then introduced us. "Jerry, this is my husband." Jerry took my hand, shook it, and said she was glad to meet me, using my name which Em hadn't mentioned. Obviously they'd discussed me. Em turned to me and told me that this was Jerry, Tom's wife.

Tom? I couldn't figure out who Tom was. Turns out, Em and I had gone out to eat, and I'd reviewed Tom's restaurant in the paper. I had a hard time envisioning Tom and Jerry. Tom & Jerry? You mean like the mice in the cartoons? You mean like an alcoholic egg nog?

I Never Forgave Tom

I never forgave Tom for marrying Jerry. He was a nice guy, a little below average in intelligence, but he was extremely personable, and he worked very long days. A couple of times, we'd spent long evenings, talking about his new restaurant. He didn't seem to have much business savvy. He figured that if you served good food, gave good service, and charged decent prices, that was enough. Unfortunately, it isn't.

If you have really fast service, it makes sense to have orange formica tables, paper napkins, and plastic forks. If you have fancy food, it makes sense to have tables with lit candles, cloth napkins, heavy silverware, and wine. Orange formica and cloth napkins don't go together.

I taught him how to get people to sample his restaurant. If you sell your $4 hamburger sandwich for $2 this week, you teach people that it's really a $2 hamburger, and they'll be hesitant to pay $4 next week, just as nobody pays list price for tires, unless they're hundreds of miles away from home on vacation.

Instead, I pointed out, he can use a cross-promotion with another business getting credit for giving away prizes - including free french fries at his restaurant. Everybody knows free can't be the real price - so they assume the menu prices are really the true values. When someone gets salty french fries, they are likely to buy a drink - and if the burgers smell good, they'll order a sandwich as well.

She Was Steak, Not Burgers

But while Tom was a little on the slow side, mentally - not stupid, but he had never considered how to market his restaurant - his wife was rather intelligent. She was working as a bookkeeper, and close to getting her CPA degree. She was poised and confident, and graceful. Tom was maybe 43, and a little on the plain side. Jerry was 28.

"She is so in love with Tom," Em told me. Jerry claimed that she'd only had a half-dozen dates in her life until the previous year, when Tom first asked her out. I scoffed at that. No, it's true, Em said. She wasn't turning down dates; guys were afraid to ask her out. Well, I decided, I guess I would have been afraid to ask her, too.

Get Out Of Jail Free

When Em and I first decided to marry, she just wanted to live together. I'd tried that before, and I didn't think it worked very well. Things come up from time to time, I said, and it's just too easy to walk away if there's no binding commitment.

But she pointed out that a marriage license wasn't a license to screw. "You can already sleep with me," she said. So she told me that if I ever found myself in a position that I wanted to have sex with someone else, I could. Not carte blanche, she said, because we're married. But I had a "Get Out Of Jail Free" card, so to speak. I had to tell her what I'd done, but she wouldn't kick me out for cheating - once.

Rich People Cheat More

Mom always said that rich people cheat more, but not because they're less moral. It's just that it's expensive to cheat, and poor people couldn't afford motel rooms and such. I've thought about that a lot over the years, and I've decided she's wrong. If you're insecure, you get a motel room, because you think you have to spend a bunch of money to impress the women. There are lots of guys, though, that have more courage. A back seat, a desk top, a linen closet, there are lots of places that work just fine, and if a woman is willing to screw a guy, she won't hesitate to do it on the 50 yard line at half-time if the guy suggests it.

Years later, I had a customer come in to have me write a resume for her. She didn't really have a lot to offer a potential employer, and worse yet, she didn't have any self-confidence. Like a guy needing a motel room at a fancy motel to compensate for his insecurities, this woman needed a snazzy resume to give her the self-confidence to interview well.

Deal's Off

An hour after she left the office, she phoned back to cancel the order. Her boyfriend insisted that she cancel, and she was afraid he'd beat her up if she spent the money. Hell's Bells, that's one of the reasons I thought she needed to get a new job, away from her boyfriend, so she'd have a chance to blossom into a self-confident person.

She came in a couple of days later, to pick up her check. I didn't recognize her. Instead of wearing layer upon layer of faded brown clothes, sweater and maxiskirt and all, reminding me of a timid little mouse, she was wearing a man's athletic shirt and shorts, her bare legs and her chest glowing with sweat, as if she were Wonder Woman. She had to tell me who she was. I'd been working on my files, and there were file folders stacked up in several piles on my desk, and several piles behind me. I struggled to find her file folder, and she sat in a chair next to my desk.

You Need A Change

It wasn't the sale that concerned me, as much as the notion that she had a boyfriend she feared. I tried to encourage her to be a little more assertive, and suggested that she needed to think about getting a different boyfriend, someone who would care for her instead of someone who tried to run her life. As I handed her the check back, she said, "I think I've found someone now, to do that" and at that point, the phone rang.

I answered it. I was using a very old chair that was kinda wobbly, and I had to extend one leg out to my right when I leaned backwards and to my left to reach the phone. The guy on the phone always asked me questions that were impossible to answer without pen and paper in front of the two of us, and I kept trying to get him to commit to meeting. Finally we agreed to meet at a coffeeshop near his office, three days later. And as I hung up the phone, someone sat in my lap.

Whups! I'm Falling

The chair started to fall under me. I tried to straighten up, bring my feet back up towards the chair, and as the butt was being ground into my lap, I tried to wrap my arms around her waist in order to steady the load. Oh. My. God. In the Quoran, I am told, it says that if a woman calls a man to her bed, and he does nt come, God will be angry. I had a dying wife; how can I afford to anger God? And it's not like i don't have an OK for this; I've never used my Get Out Of Jail Free. I was really confused about what was happening, and why. Did she think I wanted to be her new boyfriend? Oh, God, Help!

Finally, she decided to arise. No problem with that for me. Except that she bent over to retrieve her purse from the floor, and then again to grab her checkbook, and then a third time to get a pen she had placed there, each time wagging her butt in my face. What was she trying to accomplish?

She left without either of us saying a word. When I got home, I discussed what had happened with Em. She didn't have any idea what had transpired, either, but she was willing to predict, "there's another shoe yet to fall."

A Few Days Later

And Em was right. A few days later, a detective came into the office to get my side of the story. She claimed I'd tried to rape her, I guess. One of my friends asked around about her. It turns out that a couple of months before, she'd gone with her current boyfriend to an out-of-town dive, where he'd danced with another girl, and then she danced with another guy in order to make him jealous, then they'd gotten into a fight. They came back together, and stopped at Denny's to get a bite to eat, and a cop walked up to her and asked her about her appearance, suggesting that she might want to file charges against whoever beat her up.

A couple of years ago, she'd decided that some guy was following her. It was her next door neighbor. She drove home, and he drove there too, parking right behind her, and at that point, she rammed his car, pulling forwarding and ramming it again and again, until his car was demolished on both ends, and the car parked behind him as well.

Dickensian Justice

They charged me with battery, and wouldn't allow any questions about her pattern of bizarre behavior to be introduced as evidence. The judge decided that because I admitted putting my arms around her to keep from falling, that constituted battery, and that I should have jumped up, knocking her to the floor and should have fled my own office, trampled her because she would have been in my way, there being no exit behind me. A bad decision; my lawyer told me I'd win on appeal, and I should have appealed, in order to avoid the black spot on my record.

In Oliver Twist, author Charles Dickens writes, "If the law supposes that," said Mr. Bumble, "the law is an ass, a idiot." The fine was a piddling amount, it being a misdemeanor, so I paid it - but I closed the office. If you work alone, you're a sitting duck for any loon that comes along. And Em never complained.

It's been a long time since Em has died. I rarely go more than a day without thinking of her. Disease and pregnancy are minor little matters, compared to enslavement. For truly safe sex, you need to protect your heart.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
- battery - beautiful strangers - domestic abuse - groundhog's day - lupus - marketing - marriage - Mr. Bumble - price credibility - safe sex - wobbly chair