Master of the House
A Modern Romance
He had been behaving so strangely lately, and this had kept her waking — idly vacillating between vague, late-night streams and gnawing at her newly manicured nails. A quick pop with the fellas, that’s all he said, but what does that entail? Those fellas were bachelor assholes, still pining for undignified fun well into their 30s.
Her accusations dissipated to make room for frustration: the nippled light glowing above the foyer flickered. She had told him explicitly he needed to fix it one night this week, but he hadn’t. How could any grown man think a football game or a night out with friends more important than maintaining his own home?
She glanced at her phone to check the time, but her attention was stolen by a notification for one of her farming games. He had been vocal about his hatred for them; such a waste of time he said, and he claimed that it was tiresome to talk to her when she played them. Yet she welcomed the dopaminergic distraction, tapping away at her well-kept crops until her mind was again taken, this time by a commercial on the flatscreen. She had told him he needed to pony up for the paid, ad-free version of the service, but he hadn’t. It was an ad for Old Spice body wash, the one featuring the well-built black man in a bathroom, donning only a towel and holding up a proportionally puny bottle of wash in his big clean hand. Her husband also washed with that brand, and she was not fond of it — too macho, she thought, and it smelled much too rustic for someone like him.
But she quickly forgot that aging, lardy body of his, created by long hours at an office and lofty house payments, and thought instead about the Old Spice spokesman who was now sailing a boat sans shirt. What was he like, she wondered. Did he follow-through with what his wife requested? No, she knew, he was either unmarried or in one of those relationships in which both persons had their own thing going — bachelors with mutual understanding, apprehending their spouse’s needs before the asking could occur. Maybe they even slept with other people.
At this the long-dormant eye of her sex opened and urgently buzzed, beseeching her immediate attention. She threw the bright expensive phone down on the sofa and reached into the fuzz under her loose joggers. For a while, she played with herself gently and thought of the Old Spice spokesman — his freedom and his sailor’s independence. He probably fixed flickering foyer lights before they flickered, of his own volition. Perhaps he was his own man.
Was her bumbling, portly husband his own man? He made great money, and when she first met him he had carved a fit and yummy figure — playing basketball on Wednesday nights with the boys, golfing Saturdays, and not to mention his frayed, overused gym membership card; at the time he was as active and attractive as anyone. But he had stopped all that when they married and bought the big house. His gut now revealed ripples and dimples and had stretches etched into it. He was eating fast food too often, she thought — tomorrow he’ll need to ask the girl to prepare light sandwiches for next week.
The ad suddenly repeated itself, a frequent occurrence. He must procure that paid version. She may make him do it tonight before he fell asleep — when he was buzzed or drunk he was much more frivolous with his money. She noticed she was playing with herself passionately now. Had she changed him into this domesticated, obedient pooch? Had she made him fat? He was rough at first: he barely knew how to balance a check-book or invest properly; she and her father had taught him that. He had become, through assiduous, deliberate effort, the very man she had wanted all her life — safe, secure, and somewhat reliable. But then why weren’t they making love? Why was he out with the guys on a Friday night instead of watching Hulu with her? Yes, admittedly, she did harbor some repressed urges, and she was sure he had unspoken yearnings too, but so did every other married couple she knew. It is normal she thought, to leave those twisted fantasies in the dark.
The foyer light flickered once more. This time, though, it was accompanied by the heavy, intrusive shift of the front door’s lock. She pressed pause on the television and glanced again at her phone — 1:22, much too late. They had errands to run early tomorrow while the girl cleaned: shopping and chores that desperately needed doing.
The penetration of the lock was far more powerful in the dusky, echoing room of her impatience than it was when he returned home from work every evening. The oaf was likely stoned; she could tell by how many times he inserted the jagged key, toiling over and over with resonant force and vigor. She removed the two fingers from her insides and wiped them on her sweats.
It was then that he swaggered through the threshold, the strangest look on his face. He didn’t smell of Old Spice at all, she thought — instead what she smelled was the vague air of victory, the toasted scent of a conqueror. His overcoat hung over his arm, and his fleshy face was as flushed with sweat as his oxfords were with rain. Evading her frozen gaze, he said, ‘Hey babe’ with a smirk and swung his way upstairs to wash. She heard the rush and patter of the shower-water, heard it course and trickle through the pipes in the timber. She felt her husband’s presence and pressure all around her, all around their home—liquid and foaming and roamy and circumfluent. Every wall, every drip of water, every thought spun upward toward his gravitational weight. She could hear faintly his coarse voice chuckling and whistling, whistling and chuckling as she felt herself begin to go down. The light had stopped flickering. Brightness deluged the foyer and doorway. Her phone knelled: a muffled sound. Perhaps she had already drowned. Perhaps the fellas were up there laughing about it.
