The One-Armed Husband Bandit Strikes

Dear Jane,

Well, it had to happen eventually -- the collarbone had to heal, and the sling had to come off.

After the on-doctors-orders of 6 to 8 weeks of fiddling around one-armed and fully clothed, the first article of clothing to come off was the sling.

All of this not-naked playtime was actually the most fun I've had with any guy since the Ex. It made me take stock of all the dating experiences I've had, and the verdict was pretty glum. I realized just how perfunctory dating has become. You meet someone, you go out for a drink or dinner, and almost as if you are making ticks on a checklist, you proceed to the brief makeout session, then the mandatory feel-up, the optional blow-job, then right into bed!

So, the adolescent-style makeout sessions, complete with dry humping and hickeys, were a blast.

But when the first opportunity for sorta-naked festivities arose, I actually found myself feeling a little shy. See, as I mentioned in an earlier posting, I'm not exactly a calendar pinup. I do respectably well in the looks and body department, but I'll be the first to admit to having serious body-image issues. So serious, that I really don't know what I look like in or out of clothes any more. At some point, I just stopped looking at myself beyond perfunctory "am I clean, is my hair tidy, do I have eye boogers" kind of way. Putting on makeup had become more of a zen ritual than any real effort to be more attractive.

Anyhow, your husband seemed, well, just so delighted to be taking the clothes off me. And frankly, he was really, really happy to spend lots, and lots, and lots of time kissing me and all the areas of my skin that had been neglected for oh so long.

And by the same token, I delighted in taking the clothes off him. Actually, I was relieved to get rid of those damn Dockers and billowy shirts. (I'm prone to saying things to him like, "Hey, I like your blouse." Your husband's chest is nicely furred, and even the stole he wears year-round on his shoulders doesn't bother me all that much. He's just so substantial. There's a lot of him for me to put my arms around; a lot of him for me to explore...

Why yes, I AM that vampy -- NOT!

Dear Jane,

But it is an idealized image of what comes to women's minds when they think of the term "The Other Woman." The vamp in the negligee, right? The feral vixen out to steal your man. I know that's what came to my mind when I suspected my ex (boyfriend? husband? Only The Shadow Knows) was cheating on me. The surprising thing to me was to find out she was just a regular person, like little ole me, albeit with less style. Relaxed-fit Gap Jeans and granny boots. I don't know what was more insulting, that he would cheat on me with anyone, or that he would cheat on me with someone with no style.

I cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no taste.

No, Jane, I think you would probably be surprised if you saw me. You see, I've sat in your husband's office, I've sat at his desk with my feet up, and in that place I can't escape the ineluctable fact of you. You're very, very pretty, you know. Prettier than I am, from a purely empirical point of view -- that is, if one can possibly be empirical about the arrangement of another person's facial features. In the genetic blackjack game, you come up 21 every time. (Although your nose does look just a little bit....done. *meow* Where I come from, we call it The Five Towns Nose.)

I, on the other hand, well, appearance-wise, I'm holding 12 and trying to decide whether to hit. My looks are what you would call unconventional. Where I grew up, where a mass-market brand of bland American prettiness was queen, I stood out like a raisin on a coconut cake. I'm what you would call an acquired taste. The ex used to call my look "dynamic." A fey young Syrian boy once told me I look like an Iranian princess. Some days I look and feel like an unmade bed. When I really make an effort, I do have the ability to fool everyone into thinking that I'm the best-looking woman in the room.

You have the sleek, well-groomed look of a woman who gets regular manicures, has her hair styled in the "best" salon, and who takes classes in whatever exercise craze is currently in vogue many times a week. My guess is that right now you are taking yoga or Pilates classes. I already know that you go regularly to a tony downtown spa. Your husband told me. (That's why part of his Christmas present to me was a day of beauty at an altogether different spa in an altogether different part of town.) It's clear that you take very good care of yourself.

I, well, I love a great glass of wine, a big hunk of red meat, watching the Yankees in bars, smoking cigarettes, and I don't exercise when the weather is bad. I'm bone lazy that way. When I do feel inspired to exercise, I'll go to a crummy city-run gym and throw around dirty free weights with the ex-cons. Come springtime, my idea of fun will be to jump on my bike and ride 40 miles -- and that's before lunch. I have broken more fingernails changing bicycle tubes than I can count. The nail on my right thumb will never be the same after one particularly recalcitrant rim wouldn't give up its flaccid rubbery prisoner. Oh, well.

I am decidedly NOT thin.

It doesn't seem to matter to your husband.

So I sit in his office, and I notice the pictures that are there. I notice when they change, I notice when they are updated. And when, shortly after he and I began sleeping together, I noticed a new photo of him and you, with your children between you, I saw that it was really a picture of you and your children, and he looked sort of stuck into the back of the image, like one of those bad Weekly World News photoshop jobs.

If you believe a picture is worth a thousand words, I think this one says volumes. I believe that on rare occasions, a photograph will capture something in someone's eyes, a passing thought that registers as a nearly-imperceptible change in expression. The ex and I were at a friend's wedding, during the period when we were breaking up but hadn't yet made the final cut, and he snapped a photo of me. When you first look at the photograph, it seems normal enough -- I'm smiling brightly into the camera and holding a glass of wine. But look a little closer, and you can see so much sadness in my eyes.

Anyhow, I digress. Your husband is smiling in the photo on his desk, but even his assistant pointed out to me that he looks sheepish and uncomfortable.

I've assigned a caption for that photo. I call it: The Perfect Imitation of a Happy Family.

I Am Jane Doe 

We could have stopped it there but the kissin' was so good

Dear Jane,

The following week your husband showed up at my office early one morning, before I had even had my coffee. He looked so cute standing there in his suburban-dad uniform of pleated tan Dockers and company-logo shirt, with his hands in his pockets, asking me to lunch. Clearly, something had come over me, because there's nothing I hate more than a man in pleated Dockers. In fact, usually Dockers are a form of birth control for me (as well as for any New York woman with one iota of style).

"Are you busy today? If you're not, I'd like to take you to Peter Luger for lunch."

Now, as a girl who LIVED 6 short blocks from Luger's but had never crossed the holy threshhold to worship at the Altar of the Carnivore, who was I to say no?

It was a beautiful, warm, sunny October day. I even recall there was a touch of summer humidity in the air...

Your husband pulled up in front of my office in his convertible, shades on, top down, and I climbed in, and we sailed over the Williamsburg Bridge as if neither of us had businesses to run.

At Luger's your husband ordered for both of us, steak for two it was, and a bottle of fine red wine. I noticed that he liked to be the Man and do the ordering. As long as he liked to be the Man and do the paying, too, I would keep my brazen feminist mouth shut.

We emerged from lunch, slightly tipsy from wine and beef, and sat in the parking lot at Luger's making out again like teenagers. This was fun!

It was such a beautiful day, so summery, that neither of us wanted to go back to work. I suggested (tipsily) that we go to Coney Island and ride the Cyclone. Well, it seemed like a good idea, until I thought about the sling on my arm and my still-not-healed broken collarbone. I pictured the rough ride of that rollercoaster, and had a sudden vision of a visit to the emergency room of a Brooklyn Hospital...how would we explain THAT?

Alas, it was back to Manhattan for the two delinquents.

He dropped me in front of my building and I watched him drive off with a wave.

Two hours later my phone rang. "I need more of that kissing," he said, and I hung up the phone, bade my assistant adieu on the pretense of a client call, and went to your husband's office.

There commenced hours more kissing. I told him I didn't want to sleep with him, but the kissing was so much fun. Could we just do that for a while?

He told me that he couldn't remember the last time you had really kissed him passionately, just flat out making out, mashing, snogging, whatever. I found that to be really sad, so I kissed him a lot more. What made it interesting was the sling and the broken collarbone... you have to get pretty creative with positions when you've got a broken wing. Your husband is not a small man, so we couldn't really lay down on the sofa in his office without causing me serious pain.

There was a lot of giggling while we tried things out.

Imagine this: Does this work? OW! No, guess not. How 'bout this? OW! Okay, that seems to work...mmmmmmmmmmm.... ow! ow! broken bone! broken bone!.... tee hee... hee hee... mmmmmmm...

We finally worked it out that I fit perfectly onto your husband's lap, so we could make full-body contact, look into each other's eyes, he could twine his hands in my hair, and I could wrap my (good) arm around his neck. And, yes, Jane, in case you were wondering, those nether regions, with me straddling your husband's lap, through our clothes, were titillated and frictionated like bears rubbing on trees. Gives me a little thrill even now to think about it.

I even let him get to 2nd base. That's boobs over shirt, in case you had forgotten. I had, until your husband said gleefully, "I'm getting to 2nd base with _____!"

I just love kissing and laughing, and laughing and kissing. Isn't that what making out is supposed to be? Too many people take themselves so damn seriously when they're fooling around that they forget they're supposed to be having fun.

And your husband and I were having serious fun.

How it started

Dear Jane,

Now, where was I? Oh, yes, sleeping with your husband for the past year and a quarter. I'll tell you the whole story. Since I can't talk about it for one more minute with my friends, who have started to roll their eyes every time I mention "F's" name, I need to unload it somewhere, so this is the place I'm doing it.

Let's see, when did it start? Hmmm....I started doing business with your husband in September of 2003. The very first time I met him, he said something along the lines of, "Take my wife, please." I actually thought it was pretty crass for him to bring that up in front of a virtual stranger... But your husband, for all his tacky comments, bad pleated pants, bourgeouis values, and really terrible taste in shirts, he did something for me. There was an instantaneous attraction between us.

My friend says it's because I have a liking for BDG's -- that's Big Dumb Galoots, in the parlance. Your husband is nothing if not a BDG. If he wasn't a nice Jewish boy from New Jersey who was conditioned to follow in daddy's footsteps, take over the family business, marry a NJG and spawn a couple of ankle-biters, I'm sure he would have been a fireman or construction worker. Maybe a bartender at a ski resort.

Anyhow, we did some work together -- I hired him, and he did a really good job for me, and in the course of doing business, we learned that our birthdays were mere DAYS apart. So on his birthday, which falls three days before mine, I stopped into his office to wish him a happy-happy. He reached into his desk and pulled out a bottle of my very very favorite, our old Uncle Johnnie Walker Black. He poured a couple of toots, and we toasted to each others' good health.

I was sitting at his assistant's desk, and he was sitting in a chair next to me -- I dunno, we were looking at something on the computer, and then suddenly, he said, "And now, I'm going to give you your birthday kiss." Then leaned in and planted one on me.

I've gotta tell you, Jane.... Maybe you've forgotten, or maybe you just haven't been kissing enough people to tell the difference. Your husband, the Big Dumb Galoot, overweight, bad-shirt-wearin', well, he is a great kisser. One of the best ever.

We sat there in his office and just kissed -- for at least a half hour. Kisses that left us both breathless and shaky and saying, "wow." We made out like teenagers before a curfew. It was awesome.

Then I left and went home for the weekend.