Troubles and Treats Read online

  Every day since that moment, I have never regretted one second I’ve spent with her. That makes it imperative I fix whatever problems we have as soon as possible.

  “So how long HAS it been since you and Jenny had sex?” Jim asks.

  The guys know all about the sex swing incident. As much as it had pained me to have to relive the horror of that night last weekend, they knew what I was planning and were expecting a full run-down of the events. The guys at the hardware store had a candlelight vigil for me earlier this evening. It really was a touching moment but it just made me all emotional and shit. When I had walked into work tonight and started sobbing uncontrollably, mumbling words like “rocking” and “sleepy penis” and saying, “My kid is the spawn of Satan,” they knew the night didn’t go as planned.

  After telling them about my cock-blocking kid and showing them the Ziploc baggie filled with rice that had my cell phone nestled in it, they know it was a banner evening at the Parritt house.

  “And more importantly, why is your phone in a bag of cooked rice?” Carter questions as he reaches across the table and fingers the contents of the bag. I smack his hand away and pull the bag closer to me.

  We are on our lunch break at the automotive plant and seated at a corner table in the lunch room. The three of us still work the night shift, and there is nothing unusual about the fact that our “lunch break” occurs at 11:30 at night.

  “I dropped my phone in the toilet,” I mutter.

  “Again?” Jim asks with a laugh.

  “Shut up asshole. I was trying to scroll to the next page of the story. Fucking touch screen phones. And I wasn’t even jerking off this time. I was sitting on the edge of the tub. It was a really good part of the story too. Buffy just recited the theory of threesome-tivity, and Misty was going to reward her for being so smart. I wanted to see if Misty was wearing the pink jean skirt and white tank top like in the story about their senior prom. It was a really cute outfit.”

  Both men stare at me for so long I’m pretty sure their faces might be frozen.

  “You seriously need to get laid. Right the fuck now,” Carter tells me. “And you’re not supposed to use cooked rice, genius. Why the hell is it brown?”

  I roll my eyes at him. The rice is obviously not the important part of this story.

  “It’s Uncle Ben’s beef flavored rice. We were out of white,” I explain. “Can we please focus here? What the fuck am I supposed to do?”

  “Stop diddling your twigs and berries over a body of water,” Jim deadpans.

  “I don’t diddle anything. I stroke lovingly. I like my penis. He’s a good guy. And the berries are never involved in the stroking. Wait, do you guys play with yours?” I ask.

  Jim shrugs as he takes a bite out of his bologna sandwich. “Sometimes I do. It’s nice to incorporate the boys every once in a while so they don’t feel left out.”

  “I agree. A little ball fondling goes a long way. It just depends where you are and if you can get the right angle to get down there and bring them up to the party. I like to give them a good cupping when I’m alone. Claire does this thing with her fingers where she pushes them up so that her mouth—”

  Carter stops mid sentence when he hears me whimper.

  “Sorry, man,” he tells me sheepishly.

  This happens a lot lately. Carter and Jim will start to tell some awesome story about the sex they have with their wives and then they stop when they realize I am sitting there staring at them, hanging on every word and dry humping the table leg.

  “I don’t fucking get it. You and Claire have two kids, you’ve been married for almost seven years, and you still have amazing sex. What the hell am I doing wrong?” I ask, pushing my lunch aside.

  “I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong. I just think you guys are going through a dry spell. Everyone goes through it at some point,” Jim reassures me.

  “So you and Liz went through this?” I ask, feeling a little better about my situation.

  “Oh, fuck no. We still bang like rabbits. By ‘everyone’ I meant other people,” Jim states around a mouthful of chips. “But seriously, when was the last time you had sex?”

  I sit there for a minute pretending like I am doing calculations in my head. There is no need for that shit. I know exactly how long it’s been.

  “Good sex, or sex-sex?” I ask.

  “That’s the dumbest question I’ve ever heard. We’re men. All sex is good,” Jim states.

  “Negative, ghost rider. The pattern is full. If Claire doesn’t get off, it’s not good for me,” Carter says.

  “Did you just quote Top Gun?” Jim asks him.

  “Um, yes. Best mother fucking movie ever. I feel the need, the need, for speed!” Carter shouts with a fist pump.

  “Okay, Homo McFaggy. If you think a bunch of shirtless, sweaty men playing beach volleyball is awesome, I’m going to need you to turn in your wings, Cougar. Your straight-man wings,” Jim states.

  “Fuck you.”

  “Obviously. I thought I caught you sneaking a peak at my F-14 the other night when we were pissing. Do you and Claire role play in the bedroom? Does she call you Iceman and you call her Maverick?” Jim asks with a laugh.

  “HELLO!” I shout. “Man with a problem here. Can we get back to something important please?”

  “Sorry, but I do believe discussing Carter’s sexual orientation is important,” Jim says as Carter reaches over and punches him in the arm.

  “Okay, back to the original question. How long has it been?” Carter asks. “And I’m not talking about the ‘just the tip’ night after Billy was born. I’m talking full contact, all the way home, screaming for your mommy sex.”

  “If I recall correctly, the screaming for your mommy sex is only had by you, Carter,” Jim says with a laugh.

  “Fuck off! I did NOT scream for my mommy. I was trying to propose to Claire,” he argues.

  “Twelve months, thirteen days, nine hours, and thirty-seven minutes,” I tell them, glancing across the room at the clock hanging on the wall. “Sorry, thirty-five minutes.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Jim mutters with a look of horror on his face.

  “You know that off the top of your head?” Carter asks.

  “You two assholes try NOT having sex with your wives and get back to me on whether or not you keep track,” I complain.

  “Have you tried talking to her about it, like I suggested?” Carter questions with a smug look on his face.

  “Yes, I have, so shut the fuck up.”

  The loud speaker breaks into our conversation and informs us we have five minutes left before the production line will start back up. We all stand and gather up the remnants of our lunches from the table and head across the cafeteria to the doors that lead out to the plant.

  “Did you talk to her like you normally talk to her or did you try doing it without being a douche?” Jim asks as he tosses his garbage into the can.

  “Shut up. I’m not a douche when it comes to my wife,” I argue.

  “Really? Because I recall you asking the Elvis impersonator at your Vegas wedding if he could add a line to Jenny’s vows that said, ‘I promise to always give blow jobs with a smile on my face and love in my heart,’” Jim reminds me.

  “What? That’s a legitimate wedding vow that should be a part of everyone’s wedding ceremony,” I argue. “Do you want a wife who gives blow jobs with a frowny face?”

  We make our way across the plant to our spot on the production line, and Jim follows us even though he is supposed to be on the other side of the plant at a foreman meeting.

  “Okay, you have a few options. One, you can actually sit down with Jenny and straight up ask her why she never wants to have sex with you anymore. And by talk, I mean ask her in a loving, nice way if something is bothering her. Always ask about her well-being first. If you make this all about you and your neglected Johnson, you’ll get nowhere. You have to make her feel like you care,” Jim explains.

  “But I do car
e. I care about how she’s doing and how she’s feeling.”

  “Yeah, okay. But I’m pretty sure at this point, you care more about how she’s feeling about your penis,” Jim says.

  “True story,” I agree sadly.

  “So, do not use the words: bang, anal, blow job, just the tip, or it makes him smile when you kiss it,” Jim tells me.

  “What the fuck am I supposed to say then? Those are all the good ones,” I complain.

  “Yes, all the good ones you used when you conned her into having sex with you six weeks after Billy was born. I do believe she took 'just the tip' literally and you told her, 'If your vagina is sore after having Billy chew his way out, I’d be fine with anal,'” Carter adds.

  “I still don’t see what was wrong with that. I was trying to be nice and make her feel better.”

  After not having sex her entire pregnancy and then having to wait another six weeks for her floppy bits to fuse back together, I had been desperate. Telling her about all the nightmares I was having of seeing Billy crowning during the delivery probably wasn’t my finest hour. But she cornered me in the middle of the night when I woke up screaming from another bad dream. I had been half asleep and could not be held responsible for the things I said. I knew comparing the birth of our son to the movie Alien when that little monster tears his way out of that dude’s stomach was a bad idea, but I wasn’t fully awake yet! Picture the blood, the gore, the slime, and the goo as this little freaky thing rips someone’s stomach open to get out. Now picture that happening with your wife’s vagina. The vagina you’ve touched, sucked, licked, and worshiped for years. It took a little time to separate the two.

  Jenny had a c-section with Veronica, and I didn’t see anything that happened below her neck. I remembered crying tears of joy when they handed Veronica to us and the nurse helped me put on her first onesie that read: Watch your fucking language, There’s a goddamn baby in the room. I stared back and forth between Jenny and our little girl and I knew I had never been happier.

  With Billy, the doctor gave her the go-ahead to try and have him naturally since her c-section with Veronica was due to a drop in Veronica’s heart rate and not because Jenny had any life-threatening complications. And so Jenny decided she wanted to experience real child birth. And it was horrific. It should have been beautiful and amazing, watching the woman I love give birth to our son, but it wasn’t. There was screaming and crying and profanities and that was just from me. You didn’t even want to know what Jenny screamed when she saw I had wandered down to the foot of the birthing table and put my face right in front of the action. And once I got there, I couldn’t move. I was like a deer caught in the headlights. Or a man caught in the slaughter of his wife’s vagina. I expected to turn and see her OB with a butcher knife in his hand because of the mess down there. There had been so many things leaking out between her legs I didn’t know what the fuck was going on or how one vagina could pour that much gunk out of it and still be alive. Her vagina should have drowned.

  Telling all of this to Jenny at three in the morning a few weeks after Billy was born might be one of the reasons why we’re having problems. Talking to her again about something so monumental right now doesn’t seem like the best idea.

  “What else you got,” I ask Jim as the line powers up and I pull my hydraulic drill down from its perch on the shelf above my head.

  “Well, you could always ask your dad to tail her. Maybe she’s hiding something from you,” Jim says nonchalantly before he walks off to his meeting.

  My dad is a private investigator who specializes in cheating spouses and workman’s comp fraud. Since I am fairly certain there is no way Jenny was guilty of one of those, it leaves the other a distinct possibility.

  Oh my gosh, could this really be the problem? Why didn’t I ever think about this before?

  I am immediately appalled that my sweet, loving Jenny could do something like this and that she's been lying to me this whole time.

  Why hasn’t she told me? Why, God, WHY?

  The reason my wife doesn’t want to have sex with me anymore is because she has a fake injury she never told me about and now she is trying to milk her boss, Claire, out of money to pay for her fake recuperation.

  Chapter 3 – Baste in the Glory

  “Wait, Drew installed a baby rocker to the ceiling? That doesn’t sound right,” Claire says as she signs the stack of invoices I've printed out for her.

  When I had lost my job seven years ago at the computer design company I worked at since college, my best friend Claire asked me to help out at her chocolate shop that she shared with my other best friend Liz. After a few months of handling all of the marketing and computer design for her, I had found another job but still helped Claire out when I could. After Veronica was born, I knew I didn’t want to do the whole nine to five thing anymore. Claire had asked me to work full time and Liz had begged me to help her as well.

  It’s been three years and I am now the marketing manager of Seduction and Snacks, which has grown by leaps and bounds. A few years ago, Claire and Liz had decided to turn their business venture into a franchise. There are now ten Seduction and Snacks stores located throughout the south.

  Or is it west? I can never remember. I’m not good at geology…or genealogy…or that other thing that starts with a “g” and ends in a “y”.

  Luckily, since Claire and Carter have two kids, Liz and Jim have three, and Drew and I have two, we are all very family-oriental. The kids are all at the shop at some point during the week, and I can work from home whenever I need to, making up my own hours as I go along.

  “Yes! It was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. It was like these straps that almost look like seat belts and they hung down from the ceiling and I could sit right in it and hold Billy. There were these weird hole things made out of the straps that you were supposed to stick your legs in I guess, but I didn’t get what the point of those were for so I didn’t use them. And it didn’t really have a back on it so I just leaned against the wall when I wasn’t rocking. You should have seen how quickly I got Billy to fall back to sleep. It was awesome,” I explain as I take the signed invoices and start scanning them into the computer.

  “Good morning, hookers!” Liz states as she breezes through the connecting door of Seduction and Snacks and takes a seat on the small couch in the office. “Did you get a chance to print out the order that’s coming in next week? I need to make sure I got enough strawberry gag reflex gel. I swear to God, I think Mrs. Molnar drinks that shit like water. Either that or she just needs buckets of numbing gel to get Big Balled Bob’s one huge nut down her throat.”

  We all shudder at the though of Mr. Molnar and his penis. He had come into Liz’s store a few weeks ago to tell us about his open heart surgery and somehow ended up showing us not only the scar that ran down the middle of his chest but the effect the anesthesia had on his junk. One of his balls swelled to four times its normal size. It had looked like a grapefruit hugging a toothpick with a sad, lonely prune stuck to the side.

  “Can we please not talk about Big Balled Bob this early in the morning? I had a good night last night and want to baste in the glory of it,” I tell them.

  “Bask. It’s BASK in the glory,” Liz corrects me.

  “Oh whatever. You know what I meant.”

  People are always teasing me because I get words wrong. I’m really not a dumb person. I know what I want to say in my brain, but by the time it travels to my mouth it usually gets mixed up.

  “So what happened last night after your lame-ass left us at the bar?” Liz questions. “Wait!! Oh my gosh! I totally know what happened, you little slut! Drew finally gave you his present, didn’t he?”

  I look at Liz in confusion.

  “How did you know about the present Drew got me?” I ask.

  “Duh! He bought it from me,” Liz says as she gets up from the couch to pick up a piece of paper from the printer and look it over.

  “Wait, that was yours? Did you use it with
all three girls? I don’t remember you mentioning it,” I ask as I power down the computer.

  “What the fuck are you talking about? What girls?”

  “Uh, your daughters? What other girls would I be talking about?”

  And Liz thinks I’M the dumb one.

  Liz sets the paper down on the desk and puts her hands on her hips.

  “Why in the hell would I ever use something like that with my daughters? That’s gross,” she states.

  Gross? Why the hell would it be gross?

  “Oh my Jesus,” Claire mutters, covering her mouth with her hand and staring at me with wide eyes.

  And then she starts laughing uncontrollably. She bends over at the waist and wraps her arms around her stomach.

  “Oh God! I can’t! Oh Jesus, it hurts!” she says through her snorts and giggles.

  “What the hell is so funny?” I demand.

  “Yes, enlighten us, Claire,” Liz states seriously. “A swing like the one Drew gave Jenny is no laughing matter. That thing is top of the line. He shelled out a lot of cash for that thing.”

  “Holy hell! This is the best day EVER!” Claire laughs as she finally stands backup and wipes the tears from her eyes.

  “Why did you say it was gross? What is gross about a baby rocker? Did someone puke on it or something?” I ask Liz. “You didn’t feed the girls naked on it or anything, did you?”

  This just throws Claire into more fits of laughter and causes Liz to stare at me with a horrified look on her face.

  “Oh dear God. Please tell me you didn’t. No…just...no,” she says.

  What the hell is everyone’s problem? This was the sweetest thing Drew did for me in a long time and they’re laughing at it.