HAVING GALLOWS HUMOR when your significant other has experienced tragedy after tragedy is in itself a cruel joke. Sharon’s coping mechanisms include crying her eyes out, screaming into the void, and lying fetal for hours on end. How else am I supposed to stay sane than to have a sense of humor about it all?

The difference is she has an effective release. I, on the other hand, bottle up my liberation and only let it out amongst my closest friends, who are absolutely required to share my sense of humor. Otherwise I will literally explode—an aneurysm, a stroke, a fit of violence, domestic abuse? I think I may indeed go postal someday, and if that offends you, you’re in the wrong zip code. Return to sender, ‘cause this box is full and I can’t take anymore “pity me” attitude.

Thank God Sharon isn’t just a taker. Is she high-maintenance? Does the cemetery have a lot of bones? Let me tell you. She is such a giver. When I have an absolute shit day at work she knows it. I don’t have to say a word and she is there to comfort. I’m not talking pats on the back, “there, there, here’s a cup of hot cocoa.” I mean on her knees, hands on shaft, mouth on head, eyes on me and nursing that dick like a Hardee’s milkshake. I have never once asked her to do that, and yet, like a patron saint of porno, she is pounding the back of her throat until I explode like a gerbil in a microwave.

She is so often the release I need to keep the genie in the bottle a little longer. So you better believe when she has the kind of day like the one she was having, I do my level best to return the favor. Now I learned the hard way (as all guys with an ounce of sense do) a romantic doesn’t serve up the final act first. (I tried that and it didn’t go well.) They want to savor the meal before dessert.

So I bring the flowers. Dishes washed. Floor vacuumed. Dinner cooked. Candles lit. Then the real groundwork begins. I might not even lay pipe but I’ll cover the preliminaries. Go by the numbers. Follow the blueprint. The tried-and-true formula. The time-honored tradition.

Neck kissed, areolas lovingly licked, nipples spared, then down, down I go. Miner’s hat on, scuba gear engaged, ready to plumb the depths of that pussy. Sharon loves my beard if only for this one act of intimacy. She forbids me to shave it. Thankfully she does not apply that rule to herself. I don’t think she was expecting today to go like it did so there’s stubble. I don’t mind one bit. I love this woman.

Time to write my ABCs.

I was in college when I learned the trick. Made me real popular with the ladies. At home between semesters, Mom wants to cook me lunch. “Hey son, what you hungry for?” Still thinking about the girls at school, I blurted out “Alphabet soup!” To this day, Mom seriously thinks I like alphabet-shaped SpaghettiOs.

Tongue out, one stroke at a time. Forward slash /, back slash , hyphen - over the middle I go.

A B C D—my mind wanders. Damn that’s dark, even for me. E F—there it goes again. Come on man, get your head in the game. Speaking of head (not that kind) her fingers are running through my hair. G H I J K—just kidding. Who determines what figures of speech are worthy of abbreviating? FIIK. Next thing they’re a permanent part of our collective lexicon? Dude!

L M N O P—I’m all up in this P. One of her hands goes for the sheets. She’s kneading it like a cat. Like she’s making bread. Other hand still in my hair. A dark parody of the Ramones plays in my head.

Q R S—oh shit that’s hot! She’s squeezing her own tit, pulling at her nipple. Head lolling side to side like she’s in a fever dream.

T U V—her back arches. Chin raises.

W X—she moans, legs tensed.

Y—she’s convulsing like Linda Blair. I’m expecting levitation any second.

Z

The levee breaks and she gushes in my face. Explodes like a geyser. I love it when she cums. It makes my freaking night. My week!

Then something hits me. Something solid. She’s still cumming. It happens again. Like a bug hitting your hand outside the car at sixty miles per hour. Her trembling begins to cease.

“Oh fuck,” she says.

I look down at the sheets between her legs. Oh fuck is right.

“Oh God,” she says.

I think I’m gonna be sick. What do I do? What do I say? If I show her she’ll completely break. Her mind will snap like a dry twig. I have to get rid of it before she sees.

“Oh baby,” she purrs.

The words out of my mouth.

An arm. A leg. The remnants of some miscarriage past. And now all I’m thinking about is the miscarriage of justice it would be to reveal it to her.

She starts to sit up. I grab the tiny arm and leg, no bigger than my pinky, and I put them in my mouth. Don’t let her see. Get up, go to the bathroom.

“I love you,” she says, eyes meeting mine. She leans forward to kiss me.

Don’t let her!

Too late. Our lips connect. Just a peck then go to the bathroom.

Her tongue emerges. I can’t. She wants to explore my mouth. I do the unthinkable. Not spit out the parts in her face. That would have been easy. No. I do THE UNTHINKABLE.

My eyes tear. I chomp onto the tiny limbs, bones as soft as sardines. Like bits of powdered enamel from a dentist’s drill. My molars grind them to paste in four or five rapid beats and I swallow, just before her tongue pushes past my teeth into the sepulcher of my mouth to wrestle with mine.

Thank God. She’ll never know. I open my eyes to see hers shut. That was so close. Her eyes flash open. Her tongue withdraws.

“What?” I say.

She smirks. “Your beard.”

I know, right? Looks like a glazed pound cake, I’m thinking, then she leans back. Her eyes narrow to adjust to our dimly lit love palace. She gasps.

Before I can ask, she screams. Ear-splitting, blood-chilling, heart-stopping screams.

“What, baby? What is it?”

She’s against the headboard, blanket piled up over her like an earthworks fort.

“Your beard!” she says again, this time an accusation.

I reach up to touch my face, to find my beard. Fingers run through the slick mess. They run across a small bump. I touch it. Try to make out its tiny contours. I gently squeeze it and pluck it from my cum-soaked bristles. I hold it at arm’s lengths for old-ass eyes to focus. A tiny hand. My wife’s child’s hand. My—our—baby’s hand.

Damn my dark sense of humor. I had been thinking it the whole time I was pleasuring her.

A B C

D N C

E F-allopian

P R-egnancy

H I J K-Just kidding! L M N O P. I’m all up in this P, but this P is a cemetery. I wanna be buried in your Puss Cemetery!

Q R S

T U V

Whoa, Mama! X-tasy

Y? Because she needs this after all that’s happened in her life. Mother killed by a drunk driver. Lonely father committed suicide. Best friend murdered. And after all that, another miscarriage. No doubt from the stress.

And Zzzzzzz. The endless sleep our marriage fell into after that night. She said she couldn’t stand the sight of me. Every time she looked at me she saw the remains of her dead, dismembered child.

Yeah? Well I can’t stand Chinese now ‘cause every time I bite a soggy wonton I feel like I’m eating a baby arm.

She says if I had seen what she saw it’d scar me for life. I’ve never mentioned the severed limbs of the child I forced myself to eat to protect her sanity.

I’m dark, not cruel.

On the other side of the coin, I’m divorced, not a priest.

Deep in the drawer of my work desk I have a little black book of all my college contacts. Friends I haven’t spoken with in years, and of course, a number of one-night flings. I’ve stalked their Facebook profiles, the pointer hovering over ADD FRIEND or MESSAGE, only to chicken out.

I’m a little scared to be honest. Scratch that. If I’m being really honest, “seriously fucked up” is the best way to put it. Ever since that night, the thought of going down on a girl—one thing I was really good at—hasn’t seemed too appetizing. I’m almost tempted to ask them if they’ve visited the clinic (or back alley if they’re in a Republican state) for a little A B C D N C.

Anyhoo, with so much spare time on my hands after work I’ve been visiting Mom a lot more. She’s getting up there in years, so I can’t afford to waste too much time. One foot in the grave and all that.

She’s such an angel, I swear. Like today. She’s fussing in the kitchen. Makes me sit down. She takes a ladle and dips it in a pot.

“I made your favorite,” she says, and I don’t have the heart to tell her it was the joke of a perverted college kid. She puts the bowl in front of me. “Alphabet soup!”

I smile. And laugh my ass off.

“Something funny?”

I stifle a snicker. Shake my head. “No, Mom. Just remembering a joke.”

“Well what is it? I could use a good laugh, too.”

Not this kind, Mom. But thanks for the soup. I’m certain I’ll remember this moment years from now when I’m visiting your grave. Cause of death: asphyxiation by soup. Homemade chicken noodle, your favorite. You hate the canned stuff.

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