an excerpt from a longer (not funny) story

"One of the most frightening moments during the marriage was when the Peterson/Lacy case was going on.  I hoped so much that the pregnant Lacy wasn't murdered by her husband.  At this point he was a suspect or maybe already arrested but not yet tried.  I had my baby who kept me busy most of each night during the first year at least.  We were watching a news report that said they found that after Lacy went missing, her husband ordered porn on pay-per-view.  It sounded awful, and I was still trying to suspend judgment.  I thought we all grieve and panic differently.  I really wanted to believe he didn't do it.  Suddenly my husband said, 'He did it.'  I looked at him shocked at how sure he sounded.  'Why would he? They were having a baby that was planned and they prepared a nursery for the baby and were married and had parents who were excited about the baby.  Why are you so sure?'  This is the creepy part.  He said that the guy realized the baby would ruin his sex life."

 

Marilyn was so ashamed of having stayed with such a person, but made herself look up at her friend's face.  Sara's mouth hung open as Marilyn's had when he had said that.

"So there I was feeling terribly trapped with a new baby and a horrible husband who understood the motives of wife-and-almost-baby-fetus-killer Scott Peterson.  I didn't know if that was his way of making me feel I better have sex with him or what, but I was stunned.  Then I thought I should bring him to Earth.  I said that there is such a thing as divorce.  He shook his head no but didn't articulate what stood in the way of that choice.  'Well then,' I told him, 'he can have a sex life with Bubba,' and he knew that Bubba was the generic name for the huge mother fucker in jail who also doesn't want anything interfering with his sex life."

"Wow."  Friends from high school now sitting across from each other, many decades later.  Marilyn worried how Sara saw her because this wasn't a proud part of Marilyn's life.  "Why all the hatefulness?" Sara asked.

"I'm not sure.  Sometimes it felt like he wanted to be a woman.  He'd act like I had unfair advantages or something."

"Like what?"

"Well once I told him I'd gotten on the bus and then found out my Metrocard didn't have enough on it, and just as I was ready to get off, the driver told me to go have a seat.  My husband seemed resentful and said it was because I was a pretty woman."

Sara screwed her eyebrows.  "Instead of 'how nice that the driver took care of my family.'" 

Marilyn looked at Sara, a proud dyke since before they had met, and thought Sara was more 'man' in her 5'4" self than Marilyn's ex had been.

"Yeah.  That always felt so weird when he acted that way.  Growing up, his family was middle class and he had way more advantage that way.  But my mother was a nicer person than his family."

 

They ate quietly for a minute, and then Marilyn continued.

"I have even wondered if he was really an angry gay man under all that dominating crap.  His father used to accuse him of being gay because he crossed his legs like a woman might.  Maybe because of his ability to draw also.  That's not very fair.  Plus I think he resented his mother for not protecting him from his father.  His father was abusive when it wasn't called abuse in his part of the world."

"A woman was not to go against her husband when disciplining the children, ever."  Sara spoke with authority on this subject.

"Well here, it makes the mom an accomplice to abuse and worse."

 

"That's now!"

"Wow.  I really should not have been with him.  I remember him saying something so weird to me when the baby was less than a year.  He presented it as a compliment, but I heard it as a statement about what was in store for me.  He said he knew I really loved the baby because I even stood up to him when it came to the baby.  And I stood there and wondered why we weren't on the same side of wanting our baby to be treated well.  I wasn't even healed yet and instead of a partner, I had someone I had to fight while taking care of a newborn who was not big on sleeping.  With no parents to help me, I really didn't know that I'd survive."

 

"So when did the sexual violation happen?" Sara asked with no doubt in her voice.

"Huh?"

"When did the sexual violation happen?" she repeated.

 

"You mean to him?"

"Yes, to your ex."

"You sound so sure.  I never thought of that."

"I am sure," she said, "but, I warn you, he is the kind of Latino who would rather kill himself than admit it."