We're having dinner while I watch a tutorial on how to make my own yogurt. She's talking about a car accident she drove by this morning. I see myself nodding in the reflection of the yogurt video. She mentions several people died, blood and limbs everywhere. I almost look up. She changes the subject—religion, baseball, sex, quantum mechanics. The electronic yogurt maker doesn't ship to my location. She mentions the Middle East, so I chime in. "Ya, they need to figure something out over there." She agrees and slides an open notebook across the table. She wrote a little story and wants my feedback. I try reading it but it's too long. 168 words. I finish five of them. There once was a young... I start counting the ceiling tiles instead. Thirty-two. Thirty-six if you count the amorphous pieces wedged into the corners. I don't think they should count though. No, they don't count. She asks me what I think of her story. I raise my eyebrows and nod. She's ecstatic. She tries hiding her smile in a long swig of cranberry juice, but it's obvious. Cranberry juice is spilling out the corners of her mouth. She keeps talking and I keep nodding.

Next week we're at a couple's retreat. I realize I've been nodding too much. She wants a massage because her neck is sore from sitting too long. We sit in the waiting room for two hours. She's reading a furniture magazine and I'm checking my email. The yogurt maker is stuck at the border and delayed for three weeks.

We're called in for our massages—she follows the clerk who turns left, but I'm distracted with the nasty email I'm writing to eYogurt Incorporated and turn right. A Spaniard named Rafael gives her a massage, while a Scottish lesbian named Beathag gives me a lobotomy. Rafael's playing Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata on his iPod while he covers my wife in a hemp-infused coconut oil. Beathag has me pinned down—hands tied to my feet behind my back and a ball-gag in my mouth. When our sessions end, Rafael gives my wife a cotton robe and a lollipop. Beathag hands me a mouthguard and a sharpie to sniff on the way home. It smells incredible.

We stop at a Wal-Mart to pick up more sharpies, all the flavours—blue, green, yellow, red, purple and orange. I stick a couple up my nose and head to checkout. The teenage girl at the register says I look like a gay walrus. I smile. "Thanks, you too." By the end of the week, the inside of my nose looks like the Sistine Chapel. Boogers from all over come to take pictures. The local boogers hate them and make fun of their cargo shorts, polo shirts and fanny packs. Sometimes they fight and it tickles my nose until I have to sneeze. I can't find a Kleenex, so I sneeze into a piece of paper. The New Yorker calls me a young Kandinsky. It reminds me to buy a couch from IKEA, but I assemble it wrong—that or it's a dining table. My wife and I watch Schindler's List with our legs dangling off the edge. She makes a funny joke about the Jews; I laugh and tell my mother the next day. My mother doesn't think it's funny and reminds me that we're Jewish. I write up my wife to human resources. I want her fired for a hate crime, but our two-year-old says no, crumples up the paper and drools on it. The New York Times calls him a young Demuth, and he makes Forbes' top 5 under 5 list.

My wife's neck is sore again, so we go back to the retreat. Rafael gives her a hug and a kiss on the cheek while Beathag yells at me for not wearing my mouthguard. Rafael seduces my wife, and they spend their forty-five minutes making love. Beathag has a belt wrapped around my head while her assistant throttles my brain with freezing cold metal prongs. She's yelling at me to bite down on the belt, but I can't feel my jaw anymore. It's a good zap. My brains vibrating faster than Wile E. Coyote crashing into the side of a cliff. Faster than my Aunt Theresa's sex toy I mistook for the remote when I was nine. Faster than particles when they're really busy. Beathag helps me up off the gurney and we realize I peed my pants. Her assistant is pointing and laughing while we observe the capillary action of my urine run down my sweatpants. My wife smiles and winks at Rafael as she closes the door behind her. I wave to Beathag—she hands me a small clump of my hair and a wet cloth for my soiled pants. Before we leave, we enter our names into a holiday raffle. My wife grabs my left tusk and writes our names in green sharpie.

A week passes. My wife's cooking Christmas dinner. It smells amazing, like orange and purple. She starts talking—cosmology, abortion, RuPaul's Drag Race, the housing crisis. I'm nodding along but the ceiling tiles catch my eye again. I think the corner tiles should count. Ya, they count. The doorbell rings. It's a package. My wife opens it and thanks me for the gift. She thinks the yogurt maker is for her and makes us dessert. While we're eating, she hands me another original story to read. I finish eight words this time—In the little village of Norhäagen there was... I'm distracted by how amazing the yogurt is. I'm shoveling spoonfuls of it into my mouth instead of reading. It's the greatest thing I've ever tasted. I email eYogurt Incorporated to apologize. She asks me what I think of her story.

"Wow," I reply through a mouthful of yogurt.

She's giddy. It's the best day of her life. Mine too.


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