This Post Is About Sex

Actually, it's not about sex. I just thought I would put that as a title to try to get more people to read the post. Call it marketing.

What this post is about is surprises, and I suppose the only way surprises could really be related to sex is the charge facing Julian Assange, which is "Sex by Surprise," which sounds like it could be the title of a Neil Diamond album.

(Fortunately, it isn't.)

As I write these words (5:43pm, Thursday) my wife is planning on taking me somewhere special for dinner. I'm not quite sure why, of all nights, we're going out for dinner somewhere special. I don't think May 19th is some sort of event in our history together. If it is, I'm going to be in the shit. But I don't think it is. I don't think she has some kind of good-for-one-night-only coupon to Applebees or something. We're way too uppity for that shit.

Nevertheless, Mrs. Apron texted me while I was at work with a rather cryptic message, stating, "I have an awesome idea for something you really would like to do tonight. It involves food, no carabiners, and no harnesses. Lots of vaseline and ropes, though."

I think she's kidding about that last part. But, just in case she's not, I've got our vinyl facemasks with the zipper mouth openings tucked away in the glovebox. The mention of "carabiners and harnesses" is a not-so-subtle reference to the surprise my wife planned for my birthday which was...

(Drumroll, please...)

Indoor rock wall-climbing.

......................................................

I figured out where she was taking me the night before it was scheduled to happen.

Me: "What am I supposed to wear to this alleged surprise?" I asked my bride.

Her: "Um... comfortable clothing..."

Me: "Okay. What about on my feet?"

(Pause.)

Her: "Sneakers."

(Pause.)

Me: "Are we going rock-climbing?"

(She looked at me.)

Her: "Yes." (Pause. Cue Mrs. Apron tears.) "You don't want to go, do you?" she whimpered.

Truthfully, she was right, and she knew she was right. I didn't want to go. Why the fuck would I want to go? What about my personality, my fears, my proclivities, my preferences, my tendencies, my interests, my frail sanity would make anyone think I would want to strap myself to a harness and climb up a fucking wall and then come down, only to have to do it again?

I wanted to flip out at her and ask her that very question, but, instead, I sucked it up, because the woman I loved was crying pre-emptively because she knew she had disappointed me, and so I did what I had to do and I said,

"I do want to go." And I plugged the dam. Frankly, I don't think she believed me, but it was enough to quell the tears, and it sealed the deal. The next day, I was going indoor rock-wall climbing.

Surprise.

I didn't really enjoy myself. Surprise. I was way too preoccupied with judging the speed (or lack thereof) with which I acclimated myself to the harness, knot-tying, and (to me) complex instructions delivered in a rote fashion by the staff member at the rock wall gym. When I was the climber, it was no problem. In spite of my predictable fear of heights, I zoomed up the fucking wall-- aided in that vertical venture by my monkey arms and legs. It was when I was the belayer, responsible for the safety of the woman I love more than anything in the world, that I freaked out inside, sweating like a bastard, hands trembling as I clutched onto the rope and the break for dear life, absolutely panic-stricken that something stupid I would do would send my beautiful Mrs. Apron plummeting to earth, damaging her skull and our marriage.

Fortunately, none of the various disaster scenarios I violently and graphically saw in my head throughout the afternoon came to pass, and, after three hours, we were sitting together, bathed in steep sunlight at a sidewalk café, she enjoying a veggie-burger, me plowing into fried clams and cuban-style egg rolls. Which was definitely more my speed.

Surprises are funny, you know-- rather like sex, I suppose. You build them up, trying to discern what the other person is going to like, and sometimes you get so wrapped up in thinking about it and planning it and obsessing over it, you forget just a little bit about what you're doing (or why you're doing it) in the first place. But, even when they're not quite what you wanted or expected, surprises generally turn out just fine.

You know, like sex.

I Confess

Being married to me is what Gilbert might call, "A uniquely singular experience." I'm strange, uncommon, and unpredictable, which keeps things interesting. I'm also irresponsible, impetuous and incompetent-- which, um, also keeps things interesting.

I also can't lie or conceal to save the hair on my ass.

When I was an EMT, I remember dropping a patient off for an MRI; this type of a call is called a "wait-and-return." It was a small office and my partner and I waited in the waiting room, reading out-of-date magazines for over two hours while our patient was MRI'd in the big paper-towel tube. As we sat, the nurses and receptionists behind the counter went milling around about their business, not saying much to us as we sat, and waited. It was the part of the job that I enjoyed the most: being on the clock whilst doing nothing but sitting on our asses. The dispatcher keyed us up several times, her voice exhibiting increased annoyance, to let us know that we had calls pending.

"Oh, well," I said back into the mic, "our patient isn't done. It's not like we can leave her here."

No, no-- leave her there we could not.

Funnily enough, that's what we ended up doing. An emergency call came through, which obviously took priority over my partner and I farting into the fabric of the waiting room chairs. So we got up, told the nurse behind the desk that another crew would be over to pick up the MRI patient when she was done, and we hustled to the elevator that would take us back to our ambulance. As the elevator doors were about to shut, a nurse came rushing towards the elevators and slid her hand in between the doors.

"Wait!" she cried as the doors parted. She had a pink Post-It note in her hand. "My friend wrote down her phone number-- she said you were cute." My partner, a 350-pound leviathan, reached out for the note and the nurse jerked her hand back as if offended.

"Um, it's not for you-- it's for your partner," she said, stuffing the Post-It note into my hand.

As I drove the ambulance down the Roosevelt Boulevard with lights and siren blaring, my partner jabbed me in the ribs repeatedly with his enormous sausage finger.

"Fuck, yeah, bitch! There's nothin' like bangin' nurse bush, know what I mean, H. P.!?" My partner had the unflattering habit of referring to me as "H. P." because of my unfortunate resemblance to the world's most famous wizard.

"Please stop calling me that," I said. My partner laughed uproariously. "And I will not be banging any nurse bush, thank you," I said, weaving in and out of traffic.

Truthfully, I was flattered. It marked the first, and only time, a woman had ever given me her phone number for the intended purpose of my calling her back and initiating some sort of conjugal contact. Not only was I flattered, I was also deeply ashamed and extremely uncomfortable. I was practically engaged to the future Mrs. Apron and I felt like I had cheated on her, even though I had done absolutely nothing of the kind. When I arrived home from work that day, my wife was taking a nap. I climbed onto the bed and woke her up.

"Listen," I said, still wearing my uniform and jacket, "there's something I need to talk to you about." She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and furrowed her brow.

"Okay," she said, "what?"

I took a deep breath.

"Today, at an MRI office, a nurse gave me her phone number. Well, actually, a co-worker of hers gave it to me, I guess she was too embarrassed or whatever, but I didn't do anything and I threw the number away-- I don't think I even talked to her-- I mean, there were three nurses working there, I don't even know which one it was. But... I just wanted to tell you, because I don't want to disrespect you. I love you."

My wife rolled her eyes.

"Bobber," she said, running her hand through my worried hair, "it's okay. I think it's kind of cool, actually-- that I have this hot commodity that other chicks want. You're behaving like you did something wrong-- you're so funny."

Later that year, I had another confession to make.

My wife, being a crafter supremo, had a pair of special fabric scissors, orange-handled Fiskars. They're special, and they're expensive. She loved and depended on these Fiskars, and she was so invested in them that she even wrote her name on the blade in black Sharpie marker.

Weird, right?

Well, you know those super-sealed plastic packages that cell-phones and other electronica come encased in that cannot be opened with anything short of copious amounts of C-4? Well, home alone, I needed to open one of these packages and, not having any C-4 handy, I grabbed the closest destructive implement I could find-- Mrs. Apron's Fiskars. And, in the process of cutting the package, half of the handle broke off. I was totally fucking beside myself. I immediately floored it to a small independent fabric store, the broken pair of scissors on the passenger seat. I was convinced that, if I did not immediately purchase and replace the scissors that my wife would stab me straight through the heart with the broken pair.

And, if the judge was a crafter, she'd probably beat the murder rap.

At the fabric store, I ran to the scissor section (I know, I was running with scissors. Naughty-naught.) and there, a portly woman in a hijab was picking up the last pair of identically-sized Fiskars. Talking at a thousand miles a minute, I babbled about my indescretion to her-- told her the whole fucking stupid story and begged her to let me have the new pair, even offering to give her the broken pair I had in my hand, plus paying her the retail cost of the Fiskars, because I am totally insane. To my astonishment, she took the broken pair, saying they were still useful, even with half a handle and my wife's name on them, and she left the store. I couldn't believe it. Behaving like a maniac in public had, for once, actually paid off for me. I jubilantly brought the new Fiskars scissors over to the counter and paid the hefty fee.

I tore open the packaging and threw it away, along with the incriminating receipt. After arriving home, I found a black Sharpie marker and wrote my wife's name on the scissors, and put them back in the container with all her other sewing crap. The still-life was complete again. A day or so later, I was watching her craft at her table and I blurted out a spontaneous confession.

"Oh, Bobber," my wife said, "I knew you'd done something to my scissors."

"How the hell did you know that?" I asked, confident that I had expertly covered my tracks. She smiled at me, holding up the scissors.

"You wrote my name on these upside-down."