But there's no stopping her now. She unfastens my jeans and pushes her hand into my open fly, but the denim won't stretch enough for her to make any real progress. For this situation, however, I have a standard moveâa pushup, basicallyâwhich allows Gloria to wrestle my jeans down to my ankles. The friction of the denim will usually pull down my boxers as well, tonight being no exception, and she reaches for me as I push the jeans past my ankles.
Now that I'm erect, the size difference is unreasonable, and I'm waiting for her to figure out something is wrong. She grabs me, stroking meâ¦I'm suddenly hung like a horse and Gloria doesn't say anything.
Nothing.
If my wife doesn't notice any size difference, it must not be there.
The music in my head is a dark melody. Bass heavy. Loud, driving percussion. I want to pull away from her. I want to get off this couch and walk away, get out of here. If I'm going to lose my mind, I want to do it alone.
But I promised myself I would trust my senses, which means I must accept my genitalia really is this size, regardless of what I previously believed, and now, on the couch, weâ
You know, this is supposed to be the most fun thing you can do in the world, but right now I'm so nervous and paranoid I can hardly feel anything down there. So I do what any guy would do in this situationâI call up sexy images. Other images. Maybe it's wrong to do that, to think of someone else, but it's a lot better than physically cheating on my wife.
Right?
So I start thinking about this girl. She sent me a friend request on Facebook a week or two ago. She's Swedish, twenty-one, a platinum blonde with enormous breasts. Her name is Veronika. I don't know how she found me, but for several days now she's been writing me emails asking about the screenwriting process. She's funny and hot and if you were ever going to have a sexual fantasy about someone, she would be it.
I imagine running into her somewhere. Maybe I'm on a business trip in Santa Monica, where she attends college. We meet for drinks at a Hollywood bar. Spot a couple of famous actors, grab some dinner, she wonders if I might have a look at a script she's working on.
Do you have it on you?
I ask.
No
, she says.
It's back at my apartment. Would you mind stopping by for a few minutes?
Her apartment is small. Starving artist chic. First kiss even before the door closes. Her hands in my hair, my hands on her waist, sliding downwards as we stumble toward the couch. I push her down. Hike up her skirt. She's not wearing underwear. Her hands on my belt, unfastening, and then I'm on top of her, skin like velvet, tanned legs wrapped around me, I push into herâ
A few minutes later Gloria and I are in each other's arms, bodies damp, cooling quickly. She tells me she loves me. We lie there a little longer, and it seems like she's going to say something else. I wait for it, actually hoping she might ask about my newfound size. But the moment passes. Gloria doesn't say anything. She gently pushes against my chest, which means she wants to get up, and then pads off to the bathroom.
A little while later we climb into bed, where Gloria pops her nightly Ambien and kisses me on the cheek.
“I love you, Thomas,” she says.
I smile at her, trying not to scream.
“I love you, too, Junior.”
Gloria turns on the television. I grab my notepad and try to write a few lines on my new screenplay. It's about a guy running from the FBI. These two federal agents are convinced he is the mastermind behind a plot to dismantle the country's electronic infrastructure, and they chase him across the country in an effort to stop it from happening. But the plot isn't moving as fast as I thought it might, and tonight I can hardly bring myself to look at it. Fifteen minutes later Gloria turns out her lamp, and shortly afterwards I do the same.
You ever notice how problems become clearer in the dark? How the surreal becomes real?
“Baby?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you okay?”
Questions, too, carry more weight in the dark.
“Yeah,” I say. “I'm fine.”
“It was kind of a weird weekend, wasn't it?”
She means the Halloween party and our arguments about Jack, but of course there is so much more than that. So much I haven't told her. I know you probably think I'm an ass for keeping all this to myself. I mean Gloria is my wife. But I'm so worried that if I tell her, I'll have to face the truth, the real truth, and who in this world wants to admit they are going crazy?
“Yeah, it was an odd weekend.”
“You know you can tell me anything, right? If something's on your mind, you can tell me.”
“I know, Junior.”
“You keep things bottled up sometimes. Always mister funny guy, but you don't really talk about the things that bug you the most.”
I reach over and take her hand in mine.
“I'm fine. Really.”
“Okay,” she says. “Good night.”
Five minutes later her breathing slows and deepens. Her body jerks once, twice, and she's out. Before the Ambien she tossed and turned all night. Now she sleeps like the dead.
And meâthe guy who can fall asleep anywhere in two minutesâI'm lying here like an insomniac.
I wish today had just been a dream. A Halloween party hangover.
Because even dreams seem more real than this.
SIX
A
ll these cars, all these cranky people behind steering wheels, jammed at stoplights or crawling along a freeway where the posted speed is sixty-five miles per hour, frowns on their faces, ninety percent of them dreaming about where they'd rather be right now. Back in bed. On the beach somewhere. On a golf course. Skiing fresh powder. Anything other than driving to their boring jobs.
Working in a cubicle at a job you hate has always seemed vaguely bizarre to me. In theory you are providing food and shelter for you and your family, but from moment to moment it sure doesn't seem that way. It seems more like you are just a cog in a wheel that would roll on with or without you. I sometimes wonder if cavemen ever felt this disaffected. I bet they didn't. Can you imagine them standing in the trees, debating the merits of hunting for food? Me neither.
But today I feel a bit differently about work. Today the morning monotony is comforting, because it seems familiar to me, as if I could right this sinking ship by settling into a routine. My cubicle may be a prison cell but at least I know what the four walls look like.
One thing I really hate, though, is when traffic stops on a bridge. Intellectually I know the bridge isn't going to fall down when my car is sitting on top of it. The structure has stood for years, will stand for many more, and even if it were to collapse, the likelihood of it happening when I'm on it is almost zero. And yet whenever I am stopped on a bridge I feel this irrational fear that it might fall, or that somehow I might fall from it. Today I'm stopped directly over the apex of the bridge, in the farthest right lane, and when I look out my window I see cars and trucks and tractor trailers intersecting my path in two dimensional space. Of course ours is a three-dimensional world, which means they are on a plane below me, which means I'm safe. But I don't feel safe. I feel like any minute the bridge will fall and I will be crushed.
I hate stopping on bridges.
Finally traffic begins to move again, and the very next exit is mine. From here it's only a few hundred yards to my employer's property, a gorgeous plot of hilly land with red brick buildings hidden among giant oak trees, and whispering streams that drain into a shaded duck pond. Wait. That's not true. In reality the campus is actually a flat rectangle covered by acres of parking lot and a five-story, concrete building that is conspicuously short on windows.
Every morning I park in the same spotâall the way in the back of the lot against the curb. There are ten of these curbside parking spots, and typically people with new or expensive cars park in them, for obvious reasons. Today, however, there is an old Chevy pickup truck parked in my spot. It was probably blue at some point, the truck, but the paint is so faded it's like someone imported the thing into Photoshop and turned down the color saturation. I park in some other, random spot, and as I get out of my car I notice a softball-sized dent in the truck's front left quarter panel.
A few minutes later I reach my cube, where I switch on my desktop and monitor. Then I head for the cafeteria. I pour myself a giant coffee, black, and order two eggs over medium. When the eggs are done I ask the short-order cook for two sausage patties. The patties are kept in a warmer, and I always select the best-looking two in the lot. That I enjoy selecting my own sausage patties in the work cafeteria should tell you a little about how exciting my days typically are. Recently I calculated I've consumed somewhere in the neighborhood of seven thousand eggs and seven thousand sausage patties during my storied, twelve-year tenure at this company. You might think my arteries would be completely sealed shut, but somehow my total cholesterol count has never gone higher than 165.
I usually get to work around eight-thirty, and by then the cafeteria is mostly empty. Today is no exception. There are two heavyset women talking in one corner, possibly debating about whose pantsuit contains more polyester, and there is a blue-collar dude eating pancakes near the TV. Two or three tables behind him sits a guy I have actually seen before. His name is Dick Stanton. He's probably six or seven years younger than me, and from what I've heard, he and his first name are a good match.
In the cafeteria Dick keeps mainly to himself and reads Ayn Rand novels. I've never spoken to him before, but I've overheard a few of his conversations with other people, and he seems to be an arrogant, liberal-minded guy. For instance, he hates FOX News, and I've heard him complain bitterly about Republicans. But then again lately even I feel like doing that.
On a typical day I would find an empty table and spend five minutes inhaling my breakfast, but today I am overcome with an intense desire to strike up a conversation with Dick. I find my way to his table and sit down beside him.
“Hi.”
“Oh,” he answers, still chewing on a bit of bagel. “Hi.”
“I'm Thomas Phillips.”
He nods and sort of waves as he bites into his bagel. “Dick Stanton.”
“Hope you don't mind me sitting here.”
“Not at all. Just having some breakfast and watching FOX News.”
“Your favorite, right?”
Dick looks at me a little sideways and then chuckles. “Yeah,” he says. “My favorite.”
I never do this. I never sit down and talk to strangers. And yet as the news drones on, my desire to manufacture conversation with Dick is so strong it's like it was scripted this way.
I try staring at my plate. I stab at my eggs, which bleed sunshine. I mop up yolk with pieces of sausage. But as soon as the news breaks for a commercial my mouth flies open.
“An interesting thing happened at my church yesterday.”
Dick looks at me with what seems like feigned surprise. “Really.”
“Yeah. The priest explained why gay people shouldn't be allowed to get married and how their lifestyle is immoral.”
“And this was interesting?”
“Not in itself. What I thought was interesting was the reaction of the congregation. I mean, some of them are probably gay, right? And plenty of them must know a gay person. But no one seemed surprised by what the priest had to say.”
“Well,” Dick says. “Why should they be? It's not exactly new, the church condemning homosexuality, right?”
“Right.”
“Do you go to church?” I ask him.
“A few times when I was a kid, but that's it. How about you? Every weekend?”
“Pretty much. I'm Catholic.”
“Then you already knew the church doesn't support homosexuality and especially not gay marriage.”
“Sure.”
“So what's the big deal? What makes yesterday special?”
“It was that blue orb.”
“The what?”
“It floated across the church and penetrated my forehead.”
Okay, I don't really say that. That would make me sound crazy. What I do say is, “I guess it's the way the Father was so adamant about it. We look up to this guy, confess our sins to himâ¦and he's up there demonizing people who haven't done anything wrong. What bothered me the most was that no one cared. They all seemed so damned enthusiastic about itâ”
“How do you know what anyone else was thinking?” Dick asks me. “Are you psychic?”
“If you had seen these people, you wouldn't have to ask me that. They may as well have been hypnotized.”
There is only a bite of two left of my sausage, and the eggs are all gone. I stab one of the sausage bits with my fork and eat it.
Dick watches me and says, “Isn't pork forbidden meat of the cloven hoof?”
I laugh in spite of myself.
“All I know is it's greasy and a little rubbery.”
“Manufactured and frozen for your convenience,” Dick says. “Just like my high school cafeteria.”
I nod and keep chewing. Through the windows I see a lawn crew cutting grass and manicuring hedges. I think about what Dick said about his high school cafeteria, and about this lawn crew outside, and I imagine the lawn at my own high school, Placerville High School, which does not fuck around, which comes right up to the building and says howdy.
“You ever get the feeling nothing ever changes?” Dick asks. “In school you sit at a desk in the morning, break for a prefab lunch, then go back to your desk until they let you go home. Now I'm twenty-seven and it's the same damned thing.”
I remember a strange event at Placerville High School, where a crazy kid held a classroom of students hostage, only it turned out the kid wasn't so crazy after all. In fact it seemed as if the kid had been labeled insane because he was the only person willing to tell the God's honest truth. And then I remember this isn't even a real event. It happened in a book I read once called
Rage
, written by the novelist Richard Bachman. It's interesting, don't you think, how my first instinct was to remember that book as a real event, that I couldn't separate it from actual reality? And now that I think about it, Bachman himself wasn't even a real guy. He was the pseudonym of Stephen King.