Friday Night Gwen E. Kirby
My husband and I should be making a baby but instead we argue about
whether to go out for Mexican or order pizza, each taking our standard
positions: he likes the Mexican place down the street, damning it as good
enough, and me, I know the Mexican place is fine but good enough is
not enough when we could get mediocre pizza at home and, while we're
waiting, oh, that's right, I'm ovulating, let's get this done, so I take off
my bra to show I mean business but instead he puts on a shoe because lately
my husband needs to be in the mood, he needs to feel like sex is
about love and us and not just about knocking me up,
to which I say, lean into it, is meaningless sex not hot anymore?, and I
know knocking women up is a fetish, I've been on Reddit, so imagine me
swelling and ripening and bursting with seed like a rotten melon thrown
across a field by a trebuchet, spilling its guts across the grass, or
whatever, I'm not here to tell anyone how to get their dick hard, but I do
know I'm losing wood while my husband sits on the couch, one shoe off, one
shoe on, saying that we should get out more, to which I say the Mexican
restaurant doesn't count as "getting out more" and you know what, you know
what, you only want to go out because you don't want to fuck me and he says
that isn't true but also do I have to put it like that? and this is when I
lose it because it isn't like sex has always been about love, about
us, for me, about anything other than getting my husband's rocks off
because he's a good guy and sure, let's have sex, one more thing I don't
need to worry about for a few days and so I wave his other shoe at him and I
say, now it's your turn to suck it up like a big girl, and he says, how the
fuck am I supposed to get a boner when I'm sucking it up like a big girl and
I say, imagine I'm someone else, obviously, like, do you even know what sex
is?, and that is apparently the end of too much even though, as I
said, my egg is on the fucking move like Wile E. Coyote ten feet past the
edge of the cliff, gravity about to ruin his day, and my husband leaves the
room and slams the door and I can hear him pace, say goddamit, I can
hear him get on the phone and order the pizza, a veggie garden delight, and
he doesn't ask to add pepperonis on half because he knows that I love
pepperonis and he's pissed off, pissed off enough to do something petty,
something petty that when the pizza arrives there will be no hiding from,
and when he finally comes back into the room I don't tell him that I heard,
and he sits beside me on the bed and takes my hand and it seems he's knocked
the wind out of himself and we bump shoulders and even as I wonder what
we're doing, how we can be allowed to make a baby when we don't qualify for
a loan, when we buy our wine from the pharmacy, when we fight and buy clever
t-shirts online that we don't need and can't afford, when I am medicated for
depression and he is a chronic nose picker, yes, even as I think that we are
barely clinging to the scab that covers the molten earth, my husband presses
me onto my back on our IKEA bed with one leg propped up by books and kisses
my face and then my breasts and it isn't erotic but it is sweet and his body
is heavy on top of me and, bless him, he is getting his dick hard, thinking
about trebuchets strangers women who wear latex and pop balloons, and he
pushes inside me and in an hour the pizza will arrive, and we'll open the
box and inside, look, there's the pizza with no pepperonis and god, whatever
we make together, if we make anything together, when we open the box there's
no promise that there will be pepperonis or vegetables, it could be a BBQ
chicken pizza, which neither of us like, or a wet mess of Thai noodles, or a
fish, dead eyes and cold scales, and why do I want my husband to hold me
down on this bed while we wait for the pizza without pepperonis, while he
pretends I am someone else and screws his eyes shut and screws into me but
this is what we are doing and he comes with a whimper and holds me and
whispers I love you against my hair in that way he always
has, and I stroke his back and when he leaves to clean himself up I know
he's thinking about the pizza with no pepperonis, wishing he hadn't done
that, hoping we can laugh it off, as if I didn't hear him call, as if I
don't know that the pizza is in the oven, is on its way, as if, when it
arrives, I'll do anything other than eat it, because I often need
forgiveness, because I love him, and so when we open that box I'll roll my
eyes at him, smile, but I won't say anything more, won't spoil our dinner
with talk about the absence of the pepperoni, about the empty space inside
of me that insists, without ceasing or reason, to be filled, whether we are
ready, whether I am ready, or not. 
Gwen E. Kirby has work in or coming from One Story, Tin House, Blackbird and many others. This
year, she is the George Bennett Fellow at Phillips Exeter.
Read her postcard.
Detail of art on main page courtesy
of emilegraphics.
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