Floss It
A piece of pizza flew from his mouth, landing on my nightstand. My husband anew was flossing his pearly whites, sitting right next to me as I lay in bed.
I was confused. Why was he next to me to take care of this chore? Was this his idea of connection? Fore play? Whatever it was… No.
“Why are you flossing right here?” I tried to ask nicely. “How about the bathroom?”
“I want to be near you,” he replied as our bed jiggled with the force of a jet engine.
Our honeymoon had been an eye opener (see post: He Ate It), but this was pretty gross. The hunk of pizza that sat upon my nightstand looked twice the size from a minute ago. It was oozing saliva. Or something. God knows what.
This floss thing was part of the marriage deal? It wasn’t anything like what I’d watched on tv while growing up. God help me.
He finished sawing between his teeth and departed to rinse and spit. Probably more flecks of pizza slime.
He jumped into our queen-size waterbed that he’d had since middle school, sending me airborne as I rode the waves. Being a tall guy, he’d slept diagonally so he’d fit. Since middle school. And this was our marriage bed now.
He asked, “Can you move over?”
Huh? I was already hugging the side bumper pad like a body pillow. Move over… Where? Onto the floor? He already had 3/4 of the bed and was sliding into his routine position. Diagonal.
The remaining space was a small triangular area in the upper quadrant of the bed. That space was for me. His new wife. It summoned childhood memories of our 7-person family sleeping in a pop-up camper that “sleeps 8.” That was true in the camper, if you slept like a Lincoln Log. But kids don’t sleep like that. Kids toss, turn, roll, shift sideways, spread their arms like albatrosses. We were constantly in “don’t touch me” mode.
So I slept in the fetal position, hugging the faux leather bumper pad. I prayed to God for a money tree so we could afford a new king-size bed.
After a year, the waterbed was retired to the dump and I sang my Hallelujahs. A CA-King Tempurpedic mattress entered our lives and to this day, I take up most of the bed.
Yeeeeaaaaaah.
