Desert heat

If you believe in Satan, then imagine him as a trickster, silently positioning the potholes of life where you are most likely to trip and fall into them. Watch your step! – David M. Rubin

My love, have you noticed those seemingly perfect specimens of men living at our desert complex? Oh yes, I know that you’ve noticed them, as I’ve noticed you noticing them, with their enormous muscles, cryptic tats, and whatever else that fascinates you about them. They sit around the pool – 24/7 – with cold drinks, smiles, laughs, and the pretense of texting someone; all the while watching you…always watching you…keeping one eye on you, sometimes sneaking snapshots of you wearing THAT BIKINI purchased in 110 degrees of desert heat. Required pool attire, we now call it.

I’ve dreaded this bikini from the start, especially when it first arrived on that brutally hot day. Do you remember our AC working like crap that day, or anything about that day? You probably don’t remember or pretend not to, but I do. You can’t be bothered by the silly stuff I obsess over, especially if its inconvenient for you. Sweeping it under the rug is your preference, which is cool, but the devil is in the details for me. I hate that cliché phrase, but in this case maybe it is literally true? Those men at the pool, the way they look at you…I think they are demons, the devil’s henchmen lusting over you in that bikini. Of course, I won’t ever tell you this, since you and Dr. Natas think I’m suffering from paranoid delusions again. So, I’m writing it for you here, though it will never be sent. As usual, I suffer alone, through words that only I am privy to.

God it was so hot that day, especially with no AC! The sweat was drizzling and crawling all over us, turning us into crankpots. You whined about it being too hot to attend the pool in your one-piece, a topic we’d angrily debated for weeks prior to your defiant purchase; and I ranted on and on about our decision to live in a desert that was fit for only lizards, cactus, and demons from the burning fires of hell – the metaphor that I think prompted your call to Dr. Natas, even though I framed it as a joke. You don’t seem to get my jokes anymore, or maybe I’m funny only to myself.

By the time the FedEx guy arrived with your bikini, we were at each other’s throats about this or that, the heat boiling our tempers. You tossed the Amazon box at me and told me to dump or resell the bikini on the Craigslist; to keep you dressed in turtle necks and veils to accommodate my manly fears. Such emasculating sarcasm from you at times! I manhandled the box in response, tearing it open in an overheated fit, tugging at the contents until they gave way – two Dixie Cups, an eye patch, and a few straps linking it all together. I exaggerate of course, but it looked like something worn in a grade C porno film. You know, the kind of film with a cheesy soundtrack in the background?

What were you thinking when I looped the bikini over my two fingers, suspending it in midair? Both of us stared at it and each other, in silence. You stood there frozen, your eyes dilated, like you’d just heard a loud bang upstairs. Were you being dramatic or was this genuine shock? Can you imagine the sight of us like that? I laugh at it now. Your hair was a limp, sweaty mess, and my tee looking like it had been through a wet t-shirt contest, as we fixated on this bikini, neither one of us knowing what to say. I broke the silence though with a chuckle, and you followed with a giggle, as if on cue by me or whatever script you were acting out for my benefit.

The comic relief of the moment felt like a communion between us of some sort, but I was wise to the possibility that someone – maybe you – pulled the old bait and switch routine, having appeased me with a more conservative option, but then covertly switching back to the risqué item now before us. The bikini you ordered – that I’d watch you order – was not this skimpy piece of swimwear designed to reveal everything except “maybe” 3 percent of your body surface. NO, it was not this sparse collection of threads designed to entice even the most castrated of men! I grant you that nothing is ever to scale on the web, but come on, this was not the same damn bathing suit! SOMEONE or SOMETHING switched it! What kind of husband would give his blessing to this?

If you recall – maybe you don’t – I did not voice my concern again. Yet, you reiterated several times, that I should repackage the bikini and drop it at FedEx on my way to Dr. Natas.

Finally free of the bikini, I should have let it go at that, but I didn’t. I handed the bikini to you, explaining that it was too hot outdoors to wait for a replacement. You gave me that suspicious look of yours though – that half smirk with those squinty eyes – as if I were pulling a fast one on you or not coming clean about something, but maybe you had pulled the fast one on me, knowing my patterns of behavior, anticipating my tendency to soften and acquiesce at the end of conflicts. “Hmmmm,” you said, and pulled the bikini out of my hand, taking it with you into the bathroom, and then flinging the door shut – about an inch from my nose.

Your pal, Dr. Natas, was fascinated by my decision to relent. “Why did you hand her the bikini?” he asked me with a sly smirk that mimicked your suspicious one. “This was your out – your release from a month of worry over the bikini. She told you to return it! So why hand it back to her? What were you thinking? What was your decision making process?”

Why don’t you just call me an idiot? I thought to myself.

For a shrink with a PhD, these were dumb questions, but they were designed to sound dumb, as if he required my assistance in the search for answers – his answers of course. So, I went along with this charade, pretending to ponder his provocative questions before coughing up his hourly fee of $150.00.

He sat there silently, one leg crossed over the other, smirk still in place, not moving an inch nor blinking just once. He studied my face like a detective in an interrogation room, looking for a facial tick, excessive blinking, a gesture of some kind, or anything to incriminate my wicked ways. These Freudian shrinks are all the same – always looking for the filthiest, most depraved answers. But, I was not ready to psychoanalyze this so deeply. Why can’t there ever be a simple, boring explanation? How do the Jungian shrinks approach this? I know their fees are closer to $300.00 per hour for asking the right questions, so maybe they have better answers?

“I was too hot to argue with her any further,” I told Natas. “I was exhausted from the relentless heat and a month of debating the pros and cons of her wearing such a flimsy, barely visible piece of swimwear. The hostility and passive aggressive jabs at each other were too much. There are more important things to obsess over, such as traversing the hot desert – to my job – with a leaking radiator that I cannot fix because I’m paying you $150.00 to ponder a damn bikini with me!”

“Here is something for you to consider,” Dr. Natas proposed. “Is it possible that…”

That what???

That deep down, in the most deviant recesses of my psyche, I wanted you – my cherished wife – to wear that bikini in front of those pool thugs? Was my arguing a ruse to hide a shameful fantasy of mine? Yes, he suggested this in his carefully constructed psychocrap jargon, which he danced around endlessly when I probed him further, never coming right out and proclaiming his own cuckold fantasy, but instead draping it over me like a sheet covering a dead body. Countertransference they call it! Such fancy schmancy language for the crap they dish out for $150.00 to $300.00! What a racket!

Before I could respond to Natas, he continued his rant, which I memorized because it is too bizarre to ever forget. I can still hear it replaying in my head when I try to sleep.

He said: “Maybe this is your moment of masculine curiosity inspired by unconditional love. An evolving man taking the next step, which is to know his mate without boundaries, as a woman of the world and for the world, fulfilling her birthright as a fully realized sexual being before the eyes of all men, rather than as your wife, property, or personal trophy.”

WHAT??????

WHAT WAS THIS STUFF?

Does this guy live in the real world or what? Is this the latest incarnation of ultra-radical feminism, channeled thru shrinks like Dr. Natas – advocates for the practice of cuckoldry for disempowered or impotent men? Honey, where the F__K did you find this guy?

Obviously, I vigorously denied his insinuations, letting him know that I found such ideas to be offensive to my moral sensibilities, and that he should too! We need to draw the line somewhere, psychoanalysis included, right? Well, he did not concur nor address my response, but indicated that I was visibly sweating bullets, and offered me a cold beer and the opportunity to remove my t-shirt. “This will keep you cool while we discuss your wife,” he said with a wink. He sank into his leather chair and lit a cigar, as if he were putting himself in the right mood for his ideas, all of which revolted me.

How about a little incense too, Dr. Natas, and some low-budget, porn tunes to enhance the ambiance of our perverted discussion?

Really honey, let me find my own shrink next time! Why isn’t there a board of psychology that weeds out weirdos like this?

Anyway…

I gave Natas my walking papers. It was too hot in his attic office built in 1912, the year the Titanic sank. His configuration of fans did nothing but blow the hot air around – MORE HEAT – and the windows looked like they had been sealed shut since World War 2, when his grandfather still occupied the office. His portrait, looking partly melted, hangs on the wall over Natas – they look like doppelgängers of each other, a couple of frat boys wearing Freud masks. I found myself having a difficult time breathing in there. It was like suffocating on hot volcanic ash. Who or what was this guy and his grandfather, and what was this place? What kind of shrink provides beer and encourages bare chested discussions? Have you tried reading the Natas name from right to left? OMG – Satan!

Enough of this guy!

So my love, just between us, what about my goodwill gesture of handing you the bikini? First impressions please, as those count the most. What did you think? Was I giving you license to traverse the sanctity of our marital boundaries, to dip your toes into some hinterland of feminine carnality for my own manly evolution, or dare I say, erotic enjoyment? Yes, I know, not everything works right in my head, but would I volunteer your partial or almost complete nakedness to others, for their viewing pleasures, solo activities, or more? Is this the hallmark of an evolving man, as Dr. Natas so elegantly phrased it?

Yes, Dr. Natas got me thinking about his questions. Rather than help me with my paranoia – which was the point – he greased the slide and gave me a gentle nudge, and I slid down into his overheated world of perverted ideas – just for a moment, and only to look around.

For that one crazy moment, I thought to myself, What would it be like to experience you – my wife – as a sexual being without boundaries, the kind that transforms men into testosterone fueled beasts who stop at nothing to conquer and fulfill their prey? What would it be like to know your feminine force in this way, to know your inherent carnal power to move men into aggressive, competitive, lust filled frenzies, rather than keep you squeezed into “‘My wife box?”

Well, back up the slide I climbed. I did not and do not want to know any of this. Blissful ignorance they call it? Or, in this case, paranoid ignorance! Natas made me paranoid of whatever lurks in the unexplored depths of my man cave – the dark place under the bed that all good men recoil from. Great work, Doc! Freud would be proud of you!

Forgive me my love, for thinking the above thoughts, even for just one moment. Blame it on Natas!

Upon returning home from the Natas incident, the bathroom door opened, and there you were, undressed in the bikini that I’d handed back to you. How long was I gone? Not long I guess. Or, you’d been in the bathroom a long time. You pretended to not recall anyone named Dr. Natas? Hope you were joking. Gaslighting me is not something to fool around with, given my delusional tendencies.

“How do I look sweetheart?” you asked me. I winked, told you to look in the mirror, and followed behind you; my arms wrapping around your narrowly covered waist; both of us surveying your mirror image. You moved your hand behind to my nether region, feeling my response to your sensual reflection, and smiling at yourself or me or maybe both of us – I did not know which. My body alternated between shivered fits and a tightening rigidity like a clenched fist, awash in both excitement and fear, and not knowing where one ended and the other began. You felt this happening to me, and moved your hand to my upper thigh, as if trying to simultaneously steady it and loosen it, but you said nothing, possibly relishing in my conflicted state, a testament to your potent feminine wiles. You were like my Eve from the great garden, having taken a bite of the forbidden fruit and passing it to me, intoxicating me with it, and then covering yourself with the proverbial fig leaf, awaiting your exile to the crowded world of lust crazed men – the pool.

I recovered myself though, moving back from the mirror and turning my face towards our wedding portrait. I began my brief monologue: “My love, these men at the pool are like vultures. They wait for the heat to transform women into a kind of desert roadkill for their easy picking. They are a lazy, arrogant bunch, sitting there with their drinks and smiling at what is to come – so sure of a woman’s vulnerability to this damn desert heat. In fact, I’ve heard them whispering and laughing about the synergistic effects between libido and desert heat – yep, they believe that a scorching hot day can turn even the most prudish woman into a cauldron of desires without boundaries. I think these man demons are anticipating your transformation into an inferno of lust, set ablaze by surging hormones that boil within this desert heat.”

You laughed at all this, knowing that I’m an accomplished storyteller and wordsmith with a penchant for paranoid tales. However, out of kindness, and in an effort to soothe my worries, you offered me an alternative to the bikini – distressed shorts with a crop top tee – which ultimately I turned down. No, not on the advice of Dr. Natas, but after you warned me of the dangers of heat stroke in 110 degree heat. I was convinced, or you convinced me, that the bikini was really our only option, as your health is a priority.

Besides, I do not know what is more titillating to desert men drunk on heat and testosterone: A scantily clad woman in a bikini that exposes her curves, crevices, valleys, prominences, and full spread of silky smooth skin? Or the teasing pretense of a hands off woman partially cloaked in hip-hugging, distressed shorts with a belly button exposing tee? There are men who want to see it ALL RIGHT NOW, and those who enjoy the hide and seek game, but the result being the same, don’t you think?

Babe, forgive me for having been such an ass over the bikini, but it worried me, and still does. Some men will try to take what they want, with no regard for the dignity of others, especially when a beautiful woman is involved. There’s always been a very thin line separating you from men like this, and I’ve tried to thicken it by dampening down your outward presentation of sensuality, which led to the argument over the bikini. I guess this is normal for us guys, to protect our women from the predatory beasts out there, right? It wouldn’t matter so much if you were an unattractive woman. The stakes would not be so high. But, you are gorgeous, and a man magnet!

There is just something about you that draws the attention of men, including young men, middle aged men, old men, working class men, corporate CEO men…men of every size, shape, race and ethnicity. Babe, you are one of those natural beauties in the world, even while dressed in conservative attire that covers you from neck to toe, without even a dab of makeup. You exude an unassuming but potent femininity that men respond to, and you make no effort to either resist or embellish this, which I think drives men crazy with lust for you – unadulterated beauty being the greatest aphrodisiac. This is not something that you’ve taken pleasure in or consciously willed to happen. It is just who you are.

Men come towards you in every kind of place and situation: the coffee shop, grocery store, library, park, town meeting, recycling center, everywhere! You were approached by a stranger at Mr. Hamilton’s graveside service – remember that? He asked about your shampoo, since it smelled so good. How tacky was that at a funeral? They come up with the most trivial and corny excuses to approach you: a man inquires as to whether you recommend salted or unsalted lox; another comments on your uncanny resemblance to the woman who broke his heart 10 years ago; a shy college boy, flustered and stuttering, wants to view your tats more closely to know their symbology for a school mythology project; and a hundred other excuses for them to come near you. And let’s not forget the voyeuristic men – those peeping toms or stalkers who stare at you from a short distance, looking you up and down, undressing you with their eyes, so to speak, with either a smirk or creepy, angst ridden gaze, while I’m standing there right next to you! Can you understand my paranoia? You are well dressed in these situations and I’m by your side, but this does not dissuade anyone. And now there is this desert heat, raising the stakes even more, laying you almost bare in this bikini before these lust filled men at the pool.

This relentless heat has “apparently” limited your pool attire options, but I’ve loved the options nonetheless, including that sexy ensemble of distressed shorts and crop top, which was really the only other option offered me. I could watch you all day and night in this outfit: prancing around the apartment doing your household chores; getting up and down during the game for drinks and chips; lounging on the couch and smirking while texting what’s her name with your secrets; and a hundred other daydreams that excite me. Oh my love, those tears in your shorts, especially in the back, flexing and stretching with your every move, and that adorable belly button weaving in and out of my sight! I follow them like a stalker! Such a perfect alternative to the bikini, and such a generous compromise to alleviate my fears of the stares of those men. Thank you for this, but realistically, what kind of choice was this? Both outfits, the bikini and shorts/crop ensemble, reek of sensuality. So, what was I really choosing between? Less revealing options were never offered to me? Why?

In any case, this ungodly heat has forced my hand – this is what I’ve been telling myself – and so I chose and continue to choose the option that provides maximum exposure of your body while minimizing the risk of imminent heatstroke – the bikini. “Your health is my priority,” I’ve repeatedly rationalized, but have we been fooling ourselves? I don’t think you would you have fainted in your one-piece bathing suit. Did either one of us buy into this irrational justification to strip you almost naked in front of them? Who is fooling whom here? Are we fooling each other?

The pool area has some shaded spots. Why didn’t we take advantage of this? “I couldn’t take the chance,” I told you, reiterating this several times to you, while sacrificing your virtue to the fantasies of those muscle bound beasts at the pool. You’ve gone along with my reasoning, maybe anticipating it or even leading me to it, and now you are pool candy to their eyes. Shame on me! Shame on us!

Why haven’t I told you to avoid the pool altogether, to get away from these pool thugs who drool over you every afternoon? Why have you not suggested this? We could go somewhere else to swim! What about that lake down the street? The one filled with parents, children, playful dogs, etc. Are the three of us complicit in the stripping of you? You, me, and Dr, Natas? Or, has this heat done something to us? You never said the word “bikini” to me during our 10 years of marriage, not until we moved to the desert, this heat furnace.

Do you sense or notice their eyes following you around the pool? I know you do, but do you like it? More importantly, do I like it? God, I hope not. What if Dr. Natas was right? I’m sure that I saw him the other day at our pool. What was he doing here? Could have sworn I saw his grandfather too, right by his side, sitting with a group of those tattooed demons. But, he died 40 years ago, so this is not possible. My mind is overheated I think! 112 degrees today! This heat is a bad thing for us!

I fear this hot desert we’re living in. There is something hellish about hundreds of miles of barren, scorched sand. Why does this place exist? What purpose is there for such a cruel heat spread over long stretches of nothingness peppered with prickly plants? Whom or what are they defending against? This heat feels dangerous to me!

Can we just leave this place now, before we become its victims or victims of ourselves? Babe, please get dressed. Give me that bikini, and I will dump it in the morning and take you to Walmart for a replacement. We can take a swim at the lake tomorrow. The AC is fixed. We can sit inside for now, have a cold drink and watch your soaps. We are being boiled alive out here! Can we leave now? Please? There are some good job opportunities for both of us in Vermont. How about it?

Love you,
ME

Note: This story is entirely fictional. All events, situations, circumstances, and characters depicted in this story are the products of my creative imagination. Any similarities between story characters and specific people in the real world are purely coincidental and unintentional. My characters are composites of “possible” personality types, behaviors, and quirks that interest me.

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