You’d think I would have it figured out by now. I’m a bright person, very observant, and I’ve been studying two couples for twenty years. I ought to be able to make wise statements about their marriages. But the more I watch them, the more they resist simplification.

It’s true my study hasn’t been continuous. There were long periods in my partner Pat’s marriage that were too boring to discuss, too unstimulating to invite any contemplation. And Jeff and I have had a sporadic love affair, eighteen month seminars every seven to nine years, so my examination of his and Vickie’s union has been selective. I guess I can say I’ve watched John and Pat when they were doing something (I’m like a sociological lizard who only sees what moves), and Jeff and Vickie when he and I were doing something (I had to. He made those calls in front of me. He talked to me about the boredom).

I’m accustomed to observing four interactors. My parents had me and then identical twin brothers; Mom and Dad shared a room and made one pair, and Gary and Greg shared a room and made another. Even now: each of my brothers is married and I’m not, so when we get the family together it’s them and their wives, plus me. But the marriages I notice most often, the ones that keep getting in my face, are the mayonnaise mating of my partner Pat with her lumpy husband John, and the lines of lies strung between my lover Jeff and his wife Vickie. Now those four have met. Now my net narrows.

They’re all of an age. I was born in early 1950; they are five to seven years older and not really part of the post-war boom. They live in the suburbs, and the two I don’t know well, Pat’s husband and Jeff’s wife, are heavily involved respectively in Boy and Girl Scouts, so it’s probably inevitable that they would meet, and maybe not improbable that they’d be friends.

Pat’s my junior partner although I’m five years her junior. We are management consultants with a specialty in small business; we help one- to twenty-person firms secure the structures and/or services that will enable them to operate smoothly. I get all the business and do ninety percent of the consulting, but I need Pat to write up my recommendations and to follow through and make sure they’re implemented.

I remember her twenty years ago. She and John were relative newlyweds; I was early into my first marriage. She was cute, frisky, fiercely agnostic. She’s about five foot three and small-boned; she had a great figure then. Dainty size five feet, slim ankles, shapely legs, generous breasts for her narrow frame. Her face wasn’t beautiful but she had thick dark-blonde hair with bounce to it and freckles across her upturned nose; Pat was cute. She had a number of lovers for someone born in 1945. She married John partly because the sex was so good. She even had a few affairs in those early marital times before kids, but she’s been into the community church and monogamy and scouts since she became a mom nineteen years ago.

She still has the good hair and the small feet, but now her breasts ride low and her hips are wide. Her fingernails have ridges and appear chalked. The freckles hide her wrinkles but the glasses hide her eyes.

Pat gave up sexual gratification years ago, along with high heels. She brags that her husband hasn’t slowed down (it’s that Italian blood, she habitually conjectures, referring to his one-sixteenth Sicilian genes and his tendency to initiate intercourse or fellatio about once a week). She’s happy to accommodate him; she considers it basic marital maintenance. She’s always needed his hand or mouth to achieve orgasm herself, but she’s less willing now to give it the time needed. Her orgasms aren’t as deep or rolling any more, not even those she does herself Tuesday or Thursday mornings when John leaves their bed early to work out in the basement, or Wednesday nights when he plays cards with the guys. Most of the time now she’d rather receive John in the morning, quick and hard. He kind of reminds her of himself young then. She can almost get off on that.

As for John, what do I know about John? He too was born in 1945. He’s of medium height, was always a bit chubby and is now fat. Besides the smidgeon of Italian DNA, he’s otherwise a WASP. Pat told me he was a randy boy: fathered two kids on two different girlfriends and even briefly married one of them. She said he settled down when he met her, and maybe he did. But his self employment seems to take him to bars and coffee shops a lot, and I’ll never forget the last time I socialized with them, nearly a year ago, for Pat’s birthday. A dozen and a half of us for five hours in a good restaurant. When we hugged goodbye, John reached down and very firmly very unmistakably squeezed the left cheek of my ass. I backed out of that hug and didn’t look up at him but I could feel his eyes trying to get down into mine.

Pat and John have two kids, an overweight immature nineteen year old daughter and an overweight immature fifteen year old son. They’re raising these kids on the other side of the hills, in the suburbs, where everyone sleeps. The family is into scouting and their church. In these things they parallel Jeff and Vickie.

Jeff and I have been lovers three times before. I don’t mean on three occasions; I mean three separate love affairs. The first time was twenty-one years ago, when I was new to the extramarital game and he wasn’t. He already had an established pattern of cheating on Vickie, although he spoke well of her. He’s become less complimentary with each affair. Now he complains.

Our second time started twelve years ago. We hadn’t seen each other for seven years after he broke us up the first time. Not that we were avoiding each other: our paths just didn’t cross. When we accidentally re-met, we rekindled for awhile. But I had already started a relationship with the man who was going to be my second husband, so I broke it off with Jeff after a year. And he moved out of the area.

He and his family returned five years ago, and we had brief but intense fun before his wife got the calls from a bitter ex-girlfriend. This happened at a time when Jeff was in professional crisis; he couldn’t tolerate the idea of his marriage coming apart too. He straightened up fast, lied as much as he deemed necessary to Vickie, and started to behave. Jeff was good for five years. He said it wasn’t that hard. He’s no longer restless like he used to be. That’s what always got him into trouble, that restless need to leave the house, and when he left the house, he usually ended up at a bar, where he’d get to talking to a woman, and one thing would lead to another. He’d finally reached a time in his life when it was possible for him to just stay home at night. Not get into trouble.

He was good for five years. He was like a survivor of a serious health issue: dealing first with doom and then with remedy-induced euphoria, loving life and vowing to live it better, returning slowly to the habits of careless existence, getting bored, forgetting. He was like a diet-breaker when he called me: just to check in, just to check me out, he told himself… like I’ve sometimes quickly eaten something I didn’t even want, just to blow the day, so I could then accept my lapse and settle into a nighttime binge.

We talked about it before we took my clothes off again. After five years of good behavior, why? I hadn’t met Vickie then, but I knew about her. I knew she’s a very good woman, nice, not stupid. I’d seen a few pictures; I knew she was lovely. She certainly has treated Jeff well. And their kids, the same genders and ages as Pat’s and John’s, are attractive, socially ept, well-raised. By Vickie, of course: Jeff was rarely emotionally present.

He didn’t have an answer to the question. He gave me a perfect look of chagrin and he told me he was attracted to me. But Jeff finds women attractive.

I think it’s partly a nostalgia thing for us. From the first we misbehaved sexually; doing it now makes us feel young. I look around my world and see most people repeating the vices of their youth. Pat said it just the other day, discussing John’s exasperating tendency to gain weight because he spends so much time in bars and coffee shops. She wondered aloud why people don’t get out of their own shadows.

The most recent first time with Jeff was funny and erotic. We always seem to manage the erotic part, but the older we get the more we laugh. It was erotic because, the way it worked out, after we’d tried to get together twice before and been stymied by the unpredictable social schedules of my teenagers, we stole an hour one Thursday evening, when he called from his car on the way home from some business banquet and I just happened to be alone and slightly inebriated. I’d had two glasses of champagne with a light dinner out. My kids were not expected home for an hour, but one can never be sure about kids. I was already in a silk robe. Jeff arrived wearing a suit. The inequality of attire was preserved as we embraced. Nice visuals.

But I murmured as he pulled my unharnessed body into the woolly scratch of his suit, “You don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with,” and he lost his serious composure and laughed into my mouth. When he left an hour later, he whispered down to me, “I’ll be sure to drive carefully.” We crack each other up.

Twenty years ago Jeff always spoke of Vickie with respect and admiration. He never talked about their sex life but I got the impression it was active and gratifying. Nowadays he complains about her. Says she’s getting fat, which he doesn’t mind except she blames him for it. Says they never do it. He still speaks with admiration about her mothering and other nurturing but he sounds insincere and suburban when he does so, like he should be wearing shorts and have more chins.

I think Jeff wants me because I’m safe, forbidden, and slim. He spends so much time caressing my ass and kissing my midriff that I know he appreciates the shape. And then there’s the abandon thing. Yes there’s that. Jeff and I know how to lose ourselves in sex together. Literally. Our mouths have to be involved, they’re so close to our brains. We can do it with kissing alone. Sail/slide together, into each other, till we’re not Susan and Jeff anymore; we’re just a living dancing kiss we plumb together. That’s what we go for. That’s what we love.

Love? Love. The L-word that scares so many folks, that people take so seriously. Sure we love each other; what of it? Doesn’t mean we’re supposed to be together. Jeff and I play set roles for each other, but only for a period of time. (He admits he liked the old dormitory lockout hours; it put a cap on the time he had to be perfect for some girl.)

Vickie is beautiful. She looks like Sophia Loren.

I saw all four of them a month ago. I couldn’t get out of the big Scouts fundraiser, so I went to the picnic-with-silent-auction-and-hayride. Actually kind of enjoyed the hayride, which I’d always wanted to try.

There were John and Pat and their kids, with their Nissan Pathfinder. And parked two cars away was Jeff’s Ford Explorer that I knew so well, unloading Jeff and Vickie and their two. Jeff was in shorts; I was a little appalled at his knees in the light of day.

I had to sit with Pat and John of course. I watched them relate to each other like a salt-and-pepper shaker set; they matched and they were sort of cute, but you knew unmatched salt and pepper grinders would add more to the meal. They did have mayonnaise on white bread, or at least that’s what the sandwiches appeared to be – I don’t know because I don’t eat meat.

John is even more boring than he used to be, but he tried to flirt. I don’t think he’s an entirely well-behaved husband. Pat did not notice. After John was called away about Scout announcements he returned with his Girl Scout counterpart, none other than Vickie, with Jeff and kids and their picnic in tow. Oh boy.

Vickie is beautiful. Vickie is fat. Her face doesn’t show as many lines as mine because it is plump even if six years older. But she has too much boob and belly, and her shorts ride up her inner thighs as she walks. I felt relatively gorgeous.

She paid no attention to Jeff. She talked to John, and also to Pat and even me, but she was most focused on her children. She didn’t interfere with them but her eyes sought them. Jeff relaxed back on his elbows and occasionally looked at me. He tried to appear nonchalant but I could tell from his burping how nervous he was.

They say every marriage is a mystery and that no one but the participants understand it. I think not. I’ve been married twice and I’ve watched a lot of other marriages. I’ve seen those looks of quiet exasperation and fleeting hatred. All relationships are mysteries because people are complicated. Of course. But this cultural elevation of marriage? Hah! As much a lie as the one about “quality time.” As incorrect a cultural turn as frontal hugs for kids.

If marriages are so great, how come all the passionate art is about relationships other than marriage?

Ultimately, maybe it comes down to an issue of laundry. Whose are you willing to do, and why? Jeff and Vickie have a firm arrangement; she does the shopping and he cleans the clothes. Mostly he doesn’t mind. But he does complain that women leak. He says he doesn’t care about the occasional skid mark on his son’s underwear but he’s tired of the leakage from his wife and daughter. This from a man who gets after me if I bathe too often.

John and Pat aren’t as organized. Most of the time Pat does the laundry, and that isn’t even because she’s there. In fact, with John’s self employment he’s home more than she. Most of the time Pat does the laundry and resents it. Sometimes John does it but he never does it right. Often they quietly, bitterly argue about who should do it. Their sporadic attempts to teach their children to do it have failed.

Me? I don’t mind doing the laundry. Neither do my kids. We hate chemicals, so we never buy clothing that has to be dry-cleaned, and that means we launder often. But the machines are right here in a house we love. It’s not inconvenient to do a load or two. No hostility is involved.