Sputterpub's Blog

When Callie was in her mid-40s, she was still a Victoria’s Secret customer. She’d started when she was 33 and in love with the man who would be her second husband; he took her to the store and bought her the lingerie he wanted her to wear. Callie thought that shopping trip was sexier than most of their intimate time, which wasn’t bad either. If good sex had been the only requirement, she’d still be with him.

But it wasn’t and she isn’t. By the time they broke up she wasn’t buying teddies any more. But she liked the bras and panties; she kept her Victoria’s Secret credit card. This was in the middle of the 1990s and the store then featured a fabric they called Second Skin Satin. It was glossy and slick but it had a little stretch. It was opaque but almost seamless in its construction. Callie will never understand why it was discontinued. She had to toss pieces as they stretched out or wore through over time, but even now, almost 64 years old, Callie owns two racer-back bras and one pair of high-leg panties made of the stuff.

The bras are handy when she wants to expose her shoulders. She doesn’t do that often, because she hasn’t found a way to show shoulder without brandishing her flapping upper arms, so the bras are in pretty good shape. But the panties are shot. They are still a nice red color, but the cotton crotch in each pair is starting to fray, and the underpants have stretched to old-lady dimensions.

Those red panties have been her Monday choice for the last few months. She put on 20 stress pounds this year, she’s always at her peak weight on Monday morning, and the old VS panties are the comfortable underwear in her drawer. Until now.

Her college boyfriend just paid a visit. Their breakup was amicable and they’ve stayed in touch over the decades. It had been a year since they’d last seen one another. Kevin drove from his Fresno house to Callie’s Oakland condo on Saturday, for a nice dinner out, a platonic sleepover, and Sunday morning conversation.

Kevin and Callie don’t have a sexual relationship. They did in college; in fact, they were each other’s first. But that was Berkeley around 1970 so of course they weren’t each other’s only. They stayed together, mostly, through college, but then Kevin went kind of nuts. After diagnosis and some treatment he settled into depression and bipolor disorder, which are not nuts, but his treatment toned him down in all ways, some of which were personality-altering. He became dismayingly humble and gentle. To Callie it was almost like altering a cat.

Kevin hasn’t married. Callie has twice. They haven’t resumed having sex, not even long after she became single again. But they’ve stayed fond of each another. One or the other of them occasionally considers “what if?” but they’re never in sync enough to proceed.

He showed up around 2:30. They hugged, he brought his bag inside, and then they took a walk. It wasn’t until after a good dinner out, when they were seated on her small couch watching a movie, that Callie’s nose first detected an unfamiliar odor.

She lives in one room. She’s naturally neat and not a collector. She knows her home with all her senses. Discreetly she checked out her own armpits – no. Then she assumed she was smelling some critter gift; the yard in which her cottage sits is home to all sorts of urban varmints. It wasn’t death, but might it be some shit? No – too musty.

When she walked Kevin to his car at noon yesterday, they bear-hugged. She felt his little pot belly against her stomach (in the old days Kevin was lanky and Callie was plump, but over the decades she has gotten into exercise and he has gotten into sitting). Tightly they embraced and chastely they kissed, but not before Callie concluded that Kevin was the source of the smell.

She thought about that during the afternoon and evening, as Kevin’s spoor dissipated. She had given him a towel when he arrived, and she offered her compact facility that morning, but he said he didn’t necessarily shower daily: just when he sweated.

Clearly Kevin should shower. Callie doesn’t know if the smell is on account of the anti-depressants he takes or age or both, but it is probably not a necessary smell. She knows she would mention it to him if they saw one another more often, but as it is, as they are, she is unmotivated to give somatic advice.

The mustiness was gone by this morning. Callie woke to her usual Monday environment, feeling fat. After exercise and her own shower, she opened her underwear drawer and pulled out the red panties.

And noticed them. They were humongous. They were old. They were no more okay than Kevin’s smell.

Callie made her habitual Monday morning diet promise, knowing as she vowed that it wouldn’t stick. But she did something new, too. She walked to the foot-operated garbage can in her single room, and she dropped those old panties inside.

They only did it the one time. Jill told me she didn’t know why I always commented favorably about Mike in bed; she didn’t find him any great shakes. She went on to other guys and I tried not to receive her reports.

And maybe my lack of enthusiasm for her afterstories is what ended our friendship. Or maybe it was her low self-esteem. I’ve watched her for a long time, and as crazy as it sounds, it’s like she comes to despise anyone who loves her because she’s so convinced that she’s unlovable. The way she sees it, if I like her, then that’s proof that I’m untrustworthy or foolish.

Anyway, our relationship cooled even while she stayed married to Jack. And ten years later, after they finally split, the severance was total.

During that decade I had no reason to think Jill altered her habits. I heard about her affairs early in those years, and after we stopped talking as much, the words I received came from Jack. Their marriage was not open, and I could tell that nothing had changed.

I also knew that Jill had spoken to Jack about Mike. Jack never asked, but Jill volunteered the libels. She told Jack that Mike had come on to her. She reported more than one occasion when she had resisted Mike’s lusty advances.

The way Jack told it to me, Mike had betrayed him. Jack said he used to feel close to Mike – like Mike was the brother Jack never had – “until he came on to my woman.”

Awkward doesn’t describe how I felt. But I had been Jill’s friend; there was no reason to “out” her even though we were estranged. I let Jack’s comments be.

Until the lunch.

Ten years after Mike and I divorced, the excrement hit the ventilation system in the Jack-and-Jill household. Jill left her home computer open while she ran some errands. Jack’s attention was grabbed when he passed their study door and he stepped closer to see the screen. He was slapped in the face (more like batted on the head) when he read the sexy exchange between Jill and some Facebook friend.

He confronted Jill as soon as she returned home. Immediately she confessed that she’d been straying. I thought that was refreshing, when I heard about it. Was she open because she’d come to some epiphany or moment of change? Was she hoping to provoke a declaration or new passion from Jack? I don’t know. He acted reasonable and understanding. He told her he wouldn’t stand in her way if she thought she could be happier with someone else. But he accepted her momentary honesty like it was his own, and it made him assume she was telling the truth in general. So he believed her when she asserted that this was the first time. And she later told a mutual acquaintance that he disappointed her with his reasonableness.

Jack was tolerant but decided not to wear the horns. He asked Jill to move out when she told him she was going to continue to have her own after-work relationships. He asked for a divorce when he realized that he couldn’t agree to the sort of disconnected marriage she said she’d accept.

And so it was. The final decree was about to be issued when Adam came home on winter break and Jack joined us for lunch. Jack had always been more like an uncle to Adam than a cousin. They even look alike.

We tried to make the meal celebratory. Adam was doing well at college. Jack was not happy about the divorce but was trying to view it as the first step in a new life chapter. I had white wine. Jack drank bourbon.

We were most of the way through the meal when Jack narrated the Mike story again. I guess it was supposed to be some sort of avuncular reminiscence about friendship or something, but when he got to the “I used to think of him as my brother until he came on to my woman” line, I had to speak. Jack was talking about Adam’s father.

“I’m sorry, Jack,” I said, “but that’s not the way it went down. Mike and Jill did do the deed, but it wasn’t just his idea. And he wasn’t the married one. I’m sorry, buddy. I didn’t want to tell you. But I can’t let this lie about Mike go on.”

Jack believed me. He asked Jill about the story that night. Her reaction was profound anger at me. “I can’t believe she told you,” he reported Jill saying. “She was supposed to be my friend. I’m tempted to send her an angry email.”

Of course she hasn’t. I’d welcome a chance to speak to Jill about the incident. I know why I told, and I was justified. What I want to know is why she created that lie.

Jill was an excellent house guest. She was helpful and considerate and appreciative. She got along with my husband and she was great with our son. She was also into a nonsexual cycle, so even when she drank (not much, and more likely then to smoke than drink) she kept her clothes on and her language clean. Mike and I enjoyed her company, and when Jack came by the four of us laughed a lot, played board games, watched TV.

By the time she moved out a month later, she and Jack were a couple. As far as I could tell, they had little chemistry and less sex, but they were both very nice people who enjoyed the company of one another. They were also each insecure, about their educations and body types among other things, and they seemed to develop an alliance or agreement about the hostile world. From then on, even when they quarreled, they seemed to stand back-to-back against a threat (which may have been the reason for little sex).

When they married half a year later, Mike and I were their attendants.

Their partnership prospered in daily tasks and nightly meals, but their romance never flowered. I’m not sure that bothered Jack. It must have gotten to Jill, though, because she soon sought connection beyond their comfortable existence. I was stuck because I was viewed as her closest friend; I saw and heard more than I wanted to, and I was supposed to keep it secret.

She had an affair with the senior partner at our firm (Cliff was sleazy and older than our fathers, but I guess the money and power spoke to Jill). She had sex with the Colombian guy she and Jack hired to help them rehab the house they bought, and that must have cured her of her bigotry because soon after that she told me she’d done her stepfather. She dallied with several of our clients and at least one referral source.

Jill decided not to have children because she’d had such bad mothering. She despised Marge. But the more I knew Jill, the more she resembled what she told me of her mother. Not that I had much to do with Marge. I only met her once besides the wedding events. That was an evening after the four of us had been to dinner. We stopped by Jill’s mother’s apartment to pick up something. Marge had been drinking alone; Jose was on a business trip. When Jill opened the door with her key, we surprised her mother in the act of admiring her own legs. Marge was flat on her back on her couch, left foot on the upholstered backrest and right foot straight up in the air.

“Hi kids!” she almost sang out from her supine position. “See: I still haven’t lost it. I think that’s one fine leg.” And she remained with her feet up and apart, flashing us all her black panties. Yeesh. (Even worse: after that evening Jack told me that Marge had slipped him some tongue when she kissed him goodbye.)

Nobody’s marriage lasted. Mine was the first to end, two years later. Mike and I were amicable about it (splitting up the kitchen reminded me of choosing street baseball teams when I was a kid). We agreed to share custody of then 8 year-old Adam, and we each sought new partners. The divorce was my idea, and I was happier about it than Mike was. I had my hands full as a single working mother, and I took some time finding my next husband. Mike entered a depressive phase. He started drinking nightly. He dated like a maniac, and he proposed to any woman who looked favorably on him. He was desperate to acquire a new mate.

There was a two year period between the divorce decree and Mike’s second marriage. I know Mike was unhappy but those were Adam’s best times with his dad. Mike had time for him when they were together. He made his son his best buddy. Adam still talks about staying up to watch SNL, about experiments with pancakes and food coloring, about things they built together. After Mike remarried he didn’t make much time for Adam, and the bedroom in the new house became more the property of his new stepbrother than his own.

It was probably inevitable, but early in the two year period of Mike’s singleness, he and Jill had a night together. I know because they kept calling me.

Really. It outdid any tackiness from Marge. They started in a bar after work, and I’m sure the phone calls were Jill’s idea. The first one came when they were about an hour into cocktails and had decided to cab over to Mike’s Mission District apartment. Jill called me with that sex-slur in her voice, and I could hear Mike kibitzing in the background.

I received another call half an hour after they got to Mike’s place, and then a third giggling bit of salaciousness a little after. Meanwhile Jack phoned asking if I knew where Jill was. Of course I lied.

Maybe I’m in denial (not!), but I don’t think Mike and Jill were battling an attraction when we co-habitated, to which they finally succumbed. The truth is, Jill was always way too interested in my sex life; she seemed to want to sample anything I had experienced. And Mike was just plain desperate like a puppy with any woman who said yes.

I tell you, these people are crazy. I’m surrounded by dysfunction, and I’m not going to take it wordlessly any more.

I have tried to suspend judgment. I have concluded that people read one another, and I’ve ceased harboring negative opinions about the behavior of those around me. But I will explode if I suppress it any longer. I must sputter.

It hardly matters. I’m not likely to publish this and even if I did, it would attract few readers and none who know these characters. I have learned to cherish my nonentity, like I have learned to appreciate ineffective communication.

I’m a hyper-adult who grew up at age 5, so I carry a loud child within me. I do not perceive affect, and I don’t attract it. Nothing but honesty and clarity make sense to me. I love fairness.

I’ve got family members with impulse control problems. A few with anger management issues. We’ve managed to marry into a lot of booze. Self-delusion is rampant. Most of my loved ones seem to crave murkiness or at least think there’s no getting rid of it. They don’t use words carefully or lovingly. Their perceptions are alien to me.

Take Jill.

For the longest time I didn’t think a woman would gratuitously lie about a man’s sexual aggression. Whatever for? How could she live with her self-image after? Sure I could understand a girl who felt she had to lie to family about her sexual activity to save her own life, but I assumed no woman would volunteer an untruth just to make trouble for a man. So I doubted the Bible story about Potiphar’s wife accusing Joseph of rape. And all the other myths about a rejected woman’s perjury.

Then I met Jill. The poster child for low self-esteem. The bar skank with a heart of gold. My cousin-in-law.

She wasn’t my cousin-in-law when I met her. She was my (subordinate) co-worker. I felt protective of her because she was a farm girl set loose in the big city, placed at my firm by my college roommate. I tried to look out for her.

That was hard to do. She moved fast and drank faster. She was heated and hot every night, and filled with remorse every morning. It was hard to watch and it didn’t last long.

She tried to kill herself four months after I met her.

Her mother was worse than she was. I hadn’t even met Marge but I knew from Jill that she liked to drink and flirt and had recently married her third husband, a Latino man between her age and Jill’s. Jill had developed an anti-Chicano bias in her valley school days, so she wasn’t receptive to Jose. After she downed a bottle of sleeping pills with a fifth of vodka Marge called me.

“Jill’s in SF General,” she said. “They’ve got her on a 72-hour hold. You’re going to have to take care of her now. I have a husband to attend to, and he and Jill don’t get along.”

I was beyond astounded. It was the most blatant example I’d yet experienced of parental abnegation. The Greatest Generation: more interested in its own gratification (“we were robbed of our youth”) than in its responsibilities…

What could I do? I picked Jill up and took her to my place. I rolled joint after joint and told her she could end her life if she wished. I pointed out that she was going to get dead sometime anyway, and maybe she should hang on for whatever good days were available between now and then. I made up the guest room for her and she moved in with us for a few weeks. That’s how she met my cousin Jack.

Yes. Jack and Jill. Proof that I’m not making this up; any editor would blue-pencil those names.