Chapter 5

Max woke beside the toilet. It was very early in the morning and he felt horrible. His head was throbbing and there was a sour taste in his mouth. His bowels were boiling. He hadn’t felt that bad since the time in high school when he had polished off a bottle of vodka one night. He had never been able to stand the taste of vodka since then. He hoped the same would not be true for beer from now on.

He stood up and looked at himself in the mirror. He looked terrible. At the least, small kids and grandmothers would be frightened of him – maybe. He took a little water from the tap and rinsed out his mouth trying to get rid of the horrible taste in it. Then he drank a couple mouthfuls of water trying to rehydrate his body.

“At least I don’t have to work today.”

Turning to the medicine cabinet, he rummaged through it searching for some pain relievers. He found a small box of children’s orange flavored aspirin. For a moment he wondered how old they were, but decided it didn’t matter. He took a half dozen and chewed them.

A shit, shower, and shave later he was ready to emerge from the bathroom. He didn’t feel great, but he did feel better than when he had awakened. He stepped out of the room. His wife was awake, but still in bed.

“You’re up,” she said.

He replied, “Yes.”

“You said some pretty nasty things last night,” she said.

It was time to make a stand. Max replied, “The truth hurts.”

“Is that what it was?” she asked.

“Yes,” Max answered.

He sat down on the edge of the bed facing away from her.

“Yesterday, I was laid off of work,” Max said.

“You’re kidding. They laid you off after you made that big sale?”

Max answered, “Yes.”

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

News that he was unemployed changed things significantly. The events of the previous night were immediately displaced by worries about the bills. She didn’t have to ask about his drinking the night before. Getting laid off explained his drunken state.

“I’m not worried,” Max replied. “I’ll find another sales position somewhere, and life will go on.”

“What about the bills?”

“I’m getting a reasonable severance package. The commission check will be pretty good this month. There’s unemployment. We’ve got some savings,” Max said.

“It won’t go far,” Marylou said.

“It will go far enough,” Max replied. He scrubbed his face with his hands.

Marylou said, “I saw the video from the bar on the news last night.”

“One of my better moments,” Max said. He looked over his shoulder at his wife to see her reaction.

“I almost didn’t recognize you,” Marylou said. “I didn’t know you could be like that.”

“Like how?”

“Violent. You were grinning the whole time that you were kicking that guy,” Marylou said.

The image of her husband grinning madly while beating that man was stuck in her mind. She would never look at Max the same way again. Her mental image of him as a sedate middle-class white collar man had been turned upside down. She saw that a brutal beast dwelt within him – a beast that emerged without warning and was capable of successfully taking on an armed man.

In a strange turn of events, the video had excited her. He had suddenly become an alpha male. For the first time in years, she had gone to bed and masturbated while dreaming of him mounting her.

Max said, “I must admit that I enjoyed it.”

“It looked like it,” Marylou said.

Max said, “I thought I had a bad day, but after talking to the other three people there, I discovered that it wasn’t so bad. I saw that it could have been a whole lot worse.”

“How?”

“Well, the woman discovered her boyfriend in bed with her best friend. Guy was told by his doctor that his wife had given him a dose of gonorrhea,” Max said.

“That’s horrible,” Marylou said.

“That wasn’t the worst,” Max said.

Marylou asked, “What was the worst?”

Max answered, “Cody discovered that his daughter had opened a sex website in which she was the star attraction. You don’t even want to know what kinds of things she was doing on it.”

“That is horrible,” Marylou said.

“On the ride over here, he was telling me about his daughter and what she was like when she was growing up. I swear, he was describing Barbie,” Max said.

“Barbie wouldn’t do anything like that,” she said.

“Don’t bet on it.”

Marylou said, “You can’t possibly think that poorly of her.”

“She’s a spoiled rotten little brat,” Max said. He looked over his shoulder at his wife. She looked like she was going to argue the point. He said, “Don’t make her breakfast this morning and see what kind of tantrum she throws.”

“She’s just cranky first thing in the morning,” Marylou said.

Max said, “She can be as cranky as she wants. If you aren’t in the kitchen, then you won’t have to listen to it.”

“She doesn’t like breakfast foods,” Marylou said.

“She can make own breakfast,” Max said.

“She’ll just skip eating until lunch,” Marylou said.

“Don’t fix her lunch,” Max said.

“She gets irritable when her blood sugar gets low.”

“Bullshit. There’s a time when you have to face facts. She’s spoiled rotten and you’re the one doing the spoiling,” Max said. “Why does she have to eat something different than all of the rest of us?”

“She’s particular about what she eats,” Marylou said.

Max shook his head. He shifted his position on the bed so that he was facing his wife. In a very serious tone of voice, he said, “I’m serious. It has to come to an end. Today.”

Seeing the unhappy expression on his wife’s face, Max added, “She can go hungry until she decides to eat when we eat and eat what the rest of us are served.”

Marylou said, “She’s not going to be happy.”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll take care of her,” Max said.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Marylou said. “You really hurt her feelings last night.”

“Good.”

“You’re not going to apologize to the kids for what you said to them last night, are you?”

“Nope,” Max said.

“Robert said that you were serious,” Marylou said.

Max said, “He got it right.”

“You expect too much of them,” Marylou said.

“You expect nothing of them,” Max said. He snorted and then added, “Between the two of us, we’ll hit a happy medium.”

“You’re going to make Barbie get a job,” Marylou said.

“Yes I am. They are also going to start earning their allowance. We’ve been giving them twenty dollars a week for doing nothing around the house,” Max said.

“Twenty-five.”

“That’s even worse,” Max said. “They are going to have to earn it from now on. Robert can mow the lawn and Barbie can vacuum the house or do laundry.”

“You aren’t making this easy for me.”

Max laughed. “I’m going to make it real easy for you. You won’t have to cook two different menus for every meal. You won’t have to vacuum the house from now on. That should help you out a little.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

“You bet I am,” Max said.

Marylou asked, “Did you have to bring up oral sex in front of the kids last night?”

“The question just kind of popped into my mind. You never did answer it,” Max said.

“I don’t like the taste.”

Max said, “It seems to me that my cum spends more time in your mouth if you wait until you can spit it out than if you swallow it.”

“Maybe,” she admitted.

“Try swallowing the next few times. You might discover it ain’t so bad,” Max said.

“Okay, I’ll try it.”