See the intro to Scene 1 for an explanation.
Scene 2: Farm
No TV. No music. No computer. No kids. We’ve secluded ourselves for three days at a friends’ weekend hobby farm.
As we sit on some floor pillows, cold drops of armpit sweat trickle down my sides. I thought I was relaxed about this expedition to the depths of my precarious marriage but my body’s telling me that I’m near the top of a rock wall overlooking the Baptism River Falls on Lake Superior, hanging on by my fingertips, not knowing how to prevent sewing machine legs so I can make the final five yards to the top.
We start arguing about kids, money, housework, all the usual. After a long silence, I blurt out, “I’m not happy. I don’t like the way our marriage is right now. I don’t want to go on like this.”
“So are you saying you want a divorce?” she says with fearful tears in her eyes.
“No. I just want to figure out how to make it better. I don’t know where to start but it’s no good like this.”
After a long silence, I say, “I ache to see the desire for me in your eyes. Where did it go?”
My body startles me again, this time with tears, then sobs. I don’t know what is going exactly but my ol’ man is lurking in the shadows, telling me that I’m now basically fucked since I’ve turned into a sniveling idiot, a wimp of the first degree.
But before my defenses can kick in, she reaches for my hand. I assume it’s pity but my body’s signaling something else so I don’t run. I listen. She tells me how her fire went out. My motorcycle affairs. My dismissal of her being overwhelmed with kids and housework. My disparagement of her pleas for more closeness. My working all the goddamned time.
I tell her that her parenting tone and cold shoulders have made things worse. She just listens. No yeah-buts thrown back at me this time. We settle on the caught-in-a-vicious-cycle theory of marital deterioration. I say, “What can we do?”
And then she shocks me. “Well, for starters, your vulnerability is a total turn-on.”
I can’t believe my ears but one look in her eyes and I see it. My ol’ man beats a hasty retreat.