Salon | Drama Queen for a Day

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As if Arkansas wasn't enough, a 4-year-old in Cleveland showed up to preschool with a loaded gun. Are the parents to blame? Join the debate in Mothers

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Mamafesto
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D R A M A+Q U E E N++F O R++A++D A Y+- - - - - - - >

[ CONTESTANT No. 3 ]

WAG THE DOG
By Anonymous
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I probably should have known when his opening dating gambit was to ask if he could get my tires rotated for me. Or you'd think I might have been tipped off by the fact that he was in his 40s and his last steady girlfriend was back in college. All of my friends were mystified: One of them likened him to a tree stump. Another confided that she was afraid I'd end up carving him into pieces and burying the body at the beach.

Anyway, an audio version of us having sex would have gone something like this:

(whump whump whump)
ME: Ow!
HIM: Oh, sorry, sorry ...
(whump whump whump whump)
ME: OW!
HIM: Oh, sorry, sorry ...
(whump whump whump)
ME: Ow!
HIM: Oh, sorry, sorry ...
(etc. etc. as long as I could stand it)

I so dreaded sex -- almost as much as I dreaded hurting his feelings or having to grit my teeth through another endless evening with him listening to the soundtrack from some Ted Danson movie -- that I used any excuse to avoid him. I worked late. I had my girlfriends fabricate bogus romantic crises. I visited my family. The final blow, so to speak, occurred when I woke up in the middle of the night from a dream that I was being slapped repeatedly. When I opened my eyes, I came face to face with a huge wagging schlong, its owner on his knees next to my side of the bed.

"What the hell is going on?" I yelled.

"Oh, sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to wake you."
SALON | March 31, 1998

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