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Too Hot to Hoot
The immortal storyteller Alfred Bester once said that the way to tell a story is to begin with an explosion and then build to a climax. I'd like to -- believe me, I'd like to -- but this particular story happened just the other way round.
***
It was a good climax, at least.
Well, okay, maybe that's a silly statement. Perhaps you feel that there is no such thing as a bad climax; that some are better than others, is all. I could argue the point, but I won't. Let's just agree with Woody Allen that "The worst one I ever had was right on the money," stipulate that they're all at least okay, and try to quantify the matter a bit.
On a scale of ten, then, rating "the least enjoyable orgasm I've ever had" as a One, and "reaching the culmination of hours of foreplay with the sexiest partner imaginable after years of celibacy" as a Ten, the climax I'm speaking of now was probably about a Nine-Five.
This despite the fact that every one of the ingredients I've named for a Ten were present. The foreplay had been so extensive and inventive (Groucho, leering: "...and the aft play wasn't so bad either...") that the sun was coming up by the time I was going in the other direction; my partner was the sexiest woman on the planet, my darling Zoey Berkowitz; and she was my first real lover (as opposed to mere sexer) in more years than I cared to think about. True, we had already been lovers for several months, by then...but the honeymoon was by no means over. (In fact, it still isn't. The way I see it, our relationship is really just a single continuous ongoing act of lovemaking, a dance so complex and subtle that we often disengage bodies completely for hours at a time.) My father used to say, "Familiarity breeds content," and that's always been my experience.
No, what brought the meter down as low as Nine-Five was merely a matter of mechanics. Zoey has never been a small woman, and she was nine and a half months pregnant at the time.
Indeed, if I could hop into a time machine and go far enough back into hominid history, I think I could prove my theory that pregnancy is responsible for the evolution of Man As Engineer. (This might help explain why there are so few female engineers.) A man who has successfully managed the trick with a mate in the latter stages of pregnancy possesses most of the insights necessary to build a house -- and a strong motivation in that direction, as well. If inventing math were as much fun, we'd probably own the Galaxy by now.
But I digress...
As I was saying, Zoey and I had solved the Riddle of the Sphinx together one more time, just as enough dawnglow was sneaking past the edges of the curtains to let us see what we already knew, and neither of us was paying attention to any damn imaginary scoring judges -- we were both well content, if a little fatigued. By the time we had our breath back, the day was well and truly begun: birds had begun warbling somewhere outside, and traffic was building up to the usual weekday-morning homicidal frenzy out on Route 25A (why are they all in such a hurry to get to a place they hate?), a combination of sounds that always puts me right to sleep. That's probably just where I'd have gone if Zoey hadn't poked me in a tender spot and murmured drowsily, "...'cha snickering about?"
I hadn't realized I was. In fact, I wasn't. "I'm not," I said. "I'm chuckling."
She shook her head. "Unh-unh. I like Snickers better'n Chuckles."
I considered a couple of puns having to do with the physical characteristics and components of the candy named, but left them unspoken. Sexual puns are funnier before orgasm. "Chortling, then," I said. "Definitely not a snicker."
Zoey grimaced, her eyes still glued shut. "But why? Are you."
"Oh, it's just this silly mental picture I get after we make love," I admitted. "I keep seeing little Nameless floating in there, startled awake by this rhythmic earthquake...then staring in fascination as all these millions of confused, exhausted, disappointed little wigglers show up, looking everywhere for an egg. I'll bet they tickle. The little tyke must get a chuckle out of it."
"Or a chortle," she agreed, chortling sleepily. "I will too -- f'now on. Thanks. Neat image."
She yawned hugely then, so of course I did too, and we did the little bits of physical backing and filling necessary to move from Cuddling to Snuggling, and we'd probably both have been comfortably asleep together in only another minute or two. But we had forgotten about the Invisible Machines of Murphy.
The universe is full of them, and many of them seem to be simple pressure-switches. For instance, there's one underneath most toilet seats: your weight coming down on the seat somehow causes the phone to ring. (Unless you've brought the phone in with you: in that case the switch cues a Jehovah's Witness to knock on your door.) There's another one built into most TV remote controls, wired into the channel-select button: if you try to browse, it somehow alerts every station on the the air to go to commercial. The most maddening thing about these switches is that, being of Murphy, they're unreliable: you can't be sure whether or just when they will function, except that it will usually turn out in retrospect to have been the most annoying possible moment. So the tiny pair of switches under my eyebrows, sensing that I was just about to drop off to sleep, picked now to send out the signal that causes my alarm clock to ring. Excuse me -- I mean, to:
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!
For the past two weeks that damned thing had been going off at just this ungodly hour -- set by mine own hand and with Zoey's foreknowledge and consent -- and every single time it came as a rude and ghastly surprise. Neither of us could get used to it. I had been a professional musician for a quarter of a century until I gave it up to tend bar; Zoey still was one -- or had been right up until carrying both a baby and a bass guitar got to be too much for her; it had been decades since either of us had willingly gotten up at dawn. Dawn was what you occasionally stayed up as late as. Sunlight gave you the skin cancer, everybody knew that. Civilians got up at dawn, for heaven's sake.
Well, so do nine-and-a-half-month-pregnant women. And their partners. No matter what their normal sleep-cycle is.
***
Being more than nine months pregnant may mean nothing at all. Not even when you get up to nine and a half months, and the kid hasn't even dropped yet. Maybe you just guessed wrong on the conception date. We don't want you to worry, Ms. Berkowitz. But maybe, just maybe something is wrong in there. Maybe little Nameless doesn't want to come out and play, ready or not. If so, it is a bad decision, however one might sympathize -- because once Nameless is ready, he or she will begin to do what all fully formed babies do best: excrete. And, polluting the womb, will die. And probably take you along for company. The chances of this are indeterminate...but it might be wisest if you just checked into the hospital now, Ms. Berkowitz, and allowed us to induce labor with a pitocin drip...
Zoey had awarded that offer an emphatic "Fuck you very much, Doctor," and I was behind her a hundred percent. At the time. We had both devoured most of the available literature on birthing as a subversive activity, and were determined to Do This Naturally -- not with drugs and episiotomies, like postmodern drones, but the way our primitive ancestors did it in the caves: with a trained Lamaze partner, a camcorder, and a physician standing by just in case. As far as we were concerned, Nameless could emerge in his or her own good time.
The hospital had seen all too many zealots like us; they sighed and agreed to let us wait as long as we could stand it, against advice...provided we were willing to furnish daily proof that Nameless was not in fact dying in there. In the form of a maternal urine sample. Which they would need first thing in the morning. Every morning. Wherefore:
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!
***
As far as I can see, the only disadvantage to having a pregnant lady around the home is that it's always your turn to get up. I said a few words, and Zoey stuck an elbow in my ribs, saying, "Not in front of the baby!" So I said some more words, but in my head, and got up out of bed. As I went around the bed, I confirmed by eye that her chamber pot was placed where she would be able to conveniently straddle it, and went to the bathroom to get another specimen container from the package under the sink. (If you think ten yards is too short a walk to the bathroom for a chamber pot to be necessary, you've never been nine and a half months pregnant.) And then...well, it got complicated.
I bent over, see, and took the package by a scrap of torn flap at the top, and straightened up, intending to rummage inside the thing for a specimen container once I got it up to around waist level. But Zoey had been pregnant for nine months and thirteen days, and those damn packages hold a dozen...so it was empty...and since it was empty, it didn't weigh anything...and since I was expecting it to weigh at least something, and was more than a little groggy...well, I overbalanced and landed ass-first in the bathtub, whanging my head against the tile wall.
It could have happened to you, okay? Sure, it didn't, and never will...but it could have. And if it had, I wouldn't have laughed at you.
Oh all right, I'm lying. Go ahead.
Zoey had apparently decided to rest her eyes until I got back, and then get up into a sitting position, when there was someone there to help. But her love was true: I believe the combination of my piteous wail and the loud reverberating boom were probably enough to cause at least one of her eyes to open, perhaps as much as halfway. "You alive, hon?" she murmured.
I was dazed, and not honestly sure of the answer, but I could not ignore the concern in her voice. "Depends on what you call living," I temporized, trying with little success to get out of the tub.
Her reply was a snore.
My struggles triggered another of those invisible Murphy Switches: the shower-head's built-in bombsight detected the presence of an unsuspecting human in its target area, and cut loose with the half-cup or so of ice-water it keeps handy for such occasions, scoring a direct hit on my groin. That got me up out of the bathtub, at least, though I can't explain exactly how; all I know is, an instant later I was standing up and drawing in breath to swear. Loudly. With a great effort I managed to squelch it. The useless empty paper sack that should have held specimen jars was still in my hand; I flung it angrily toward the wastebasket beyond the toilet bowl. But of course it had poor aerodynamic characteristics for a projectile: it fluttered and flapped and curled over and fell short, square into the toilet bowl. Two points. This time I was not entirely successful in suppressing my bark of rage; it emerged as a kind of moan. I turned angrily on my heel, and walked straight into the edge of the open bathroom door. The sun went nova, and when it had cooled, I found that I was sitting again, on the cold tile floor this time. The front of my head now hurt as much as the back, and my buttocks hurt twice as much.
Outside in the bedroom, Zoey snored again.
For the third time, my lungs sucked in air...and then let it out again, very slowly. If I woke Zoey with screamed curses, I'd have to explain why -- and then refrain from strangling her while she giggled. Or chortled. I got up, rubbed the places that hurt, and turned my attention to the problem of improvising an alternate urine container. If it had been for myself or another male, no problem -- but females need a wider aperture. I shuffled past the sleeping Zoey and left the bedroom, searching for inspiration.
By the time I found it, I had left our living quarters completely and wandered out into Mary's Place proper.
Living in back of a tavern has been a lifelong dream of mine, and the reality has turned out to be even better than I imagined. There, for instance, ranked in rows behind the bar, were a plethora of acceptable receptacles. (Say that three times fast with marbles in your mouth and you'll never need a dentist again.) Before selecting one, I punched a combination into The Machine and set a mug upright on its conveyor belt, which hummed into life and whisked the mug away. Less than a minute later it emerged from the far side of The Machine, filled now with fresh hot Tanzanian Peaberry coffee adulterated to my taste. I took it and the container I had chosen back into the bedroom.
There are few things a very pregnant woman will wake up for, but peeing is definitely one of them. Getting Zoey to a sitting position on the side of the bed (without tipping over the chamber pot) was probably less difficult than portaging a piano. The smell of coffee must have helped. She took a long sip of it, then came fully awake when she recognized the receptacle I was offering her.
"Jake, I am not peeing into a stein."
"Oh hell, Zoey, what's its religion got to do with anything? It's wide enough, it's got a lid I can tape shut after, we're out of specimen jars, just go ahead and get it over with, okay? Whoever it is today will be here any minute."
My best friends in the world -- a.k.a. my regular clientele -- had organized what they insisted on calling a Pee Pool: each morning one of them took a turn at coming by Mary's Place to pick up the day's specimen and ferry it to the hospital for analysis. I had no idea whose turn it was today, and was too groggy to figure it out, but the way things were going I suspected it would be one of the rare prompt ones.
Zoey thought it over, decided that peeing in a stein was preferable to rising to her feet and waddling all the way to the dunny, and relaxed to the inevitable. She set the coffee down where I couldn't reach it without stepping over her, deployed the stein, and cut loose.
Sure enough, just as she finished, there was a thunderous knocking. A distant thunderous knocking -- at the bar's front door.
That irritated me. Whoever it was could have just as easily come around to this side of the building and knocked on the much-closer back door. As a gesture of my irritation, I tossed aside the underpants I had just managed to locate, snatched the filled stein out of Zoey's hand, and set off to answer the knock stark naked. "Jake -- " Zoey called after me, and I snarled, "Whoever it is has it coming," over my shoulder. For the second time that day I padded out of the living area and into the bar, went through the swinging doors into the foyer, and flung open the outside door with a flourish.
And was vouchsafed a vision.
***
It had to be a vision. Reality, even the rather plastic kind I've learned to live with over the years, simply could not -- I felt -- produce a sight like that. Nor was it a mere hallucination: I had not had a drink in many hours, or a toke in several days. The thing was so weird that it took me a full second or two to learn to see it: at first my brain rejected what it was given and searched for plausible alternatives.
This object is a fireplug -- no, a fireplug's older brother -- over which someone has draped a very used painter's dropcloth, and onto the top of which someone has placed the severed head of a pitbull. No, wait, pitbulls don't have mustaches. Perhaps this is the secret midget son of Broderick Crawford, wearing a paint-spattered toga as part of his fraternity initiation. No, I have it now: this is R2-D2 dressed for Halloween. Or maybe --
We gaped at each other for a good five seconds of silence, the vision and I, before I tentatively -- and correctly -- identified it as the ugliest woman I had ever seen. The moment I did so, I screamed and jumped back a foot -- and at the exact same instant, she did the exact same thing.
***
The difference was, I was holding a nearly full stein.
The lid flew open when I started, and a glog of the contents sailed out into the air: an elongated fluid projectile, like a golden version of the second, liquid-metal-model Terminator. It caught her amidships and splattered, the splat-sound overpowered by the clop! of the stein lid slamming shut again.
There was a short pause, and then she barked.
I mean barked, like a dog. In fact, yapped is closer to the sound she made -- but doesn't begin to convey the impact. Even "barked" isn't strong enough. Maybe "bayed." Imagine a two-hundred-pound Pekingese with a bullhorn, and you've only started to imagine that sound. It was something like all the fingernails in the world being drawn across all the blackboards in Hell and then amplified through the Madison Square Garden sound system at maximum gain.
I shivered rather like a dog myself, blinked rapidly without effect, and felt my testicles retreating into my trunk.
The vision barked again, louder -- a sound which you can duplicate for yourself if you wish by simply inserting a power drill into each ear simultaneously. As its echo faded, I heard the distant sounds of Zoey approaching to investigate. She pushed the swinging doors open and joined me in the foyer -- stopped short and gaped.
The...I was finally beginning to believe it was a human woman, or something like one...gaped back at the two of us, staring from the naked hairy man to the pregnant woman in the ratty bathrobe. She opened her mouth to bark again, paused, blinked, looked down at the damp stain on her chest, sniffed sharply -- the sight of her hairy nostrils flaring will go with my to my grave -- glared up at me, then at the stein in my hand, then back at me, then down at the stain on her chest again, then one more time at Zoey, and finally she threw back her head and howled.
A couple of glasses burst behind the bar.
I heard them just before my hearing cut out completely, as though God had accidentally overloaded the automatic level control on my tape deck. I know I tried to scream myself, but don't know whether I succeeded. I also tried to jam my fingers into my ears, to stop the pain that continued long after actual hearing had fled. Not only didn't it help a bit, the stein I had abandoned to do so landed squarely on my bare right foot, with a crunch that I did hear, by bone conduction, and sprayed the last of its contents onto the creature's hirsute shins, pilled socks and orthopedic shoes.
A pity, for it caused her to sustain her howl longer than she might have otherwise, and to shake at me a fist like a small wrinkled ham.
Horrible as that shriek was -- and it was, even without being audible -- the end of it was worse, for now she had to draw in breath for the next one, and so I saw her teeth. I can see them now. My eyes sent my brain an urgent message asking how come they had to stay on duty when my ears had already bugged out.
With that, my Guardian Idiot snapped out of his stupor, and reminded me that I did not have to endure this trial any longer than I chose to. I closed the door quietly but firmly in her face.
Then I stood on one leg and cradled my mashed foot in both hands and hopped in pain. Then I lost my balance and fell down, for the third time that morning, on my bare ass, banging my head again too. (For those of you who are connoisseurs of anguish, a hardwood floor is perceptibly harder than either tub or tile.)
Zoey, bless her, did the only thing she could: she fell down laughing, and landed beside me on the foyer floor.
I did not join her in laughing. Not right away. I tried a withering glare -- but if age cannot wither nor custom stale my Zoey, no glare of mine is going to do the trick. Then I thought about kicking her, somewhere that wouldn't endanger Nameless -- but now was not a good time to get beat up. Next I opened my mouth to say something -- deeming it safe because I assumed she was still as deafened as me by the vision's banshee cry.
But before I could, I realized that the deafness must have worn off: I could hear Zoey's hoots of helpless hysteria, now, and the distant and fading sound of that monstrous barking outside. So I closed my mouth, prepared a slightly less offensive speech, opened my mouth again...and clearly heard the sound of knocking.
Distant knocking. Not here -- but at the back door, back in the bedroom...where one of my friends must be waiting to receive the daily beaker of piss.
Now I joined Zoey in laughing.
I just had to. It was that or go mad. We crawled to each other and hugged and laughed until our sides hurt. The louder and more urgent the distant knocking became, the harder we laughed. Finally we got up, still giggling, collected the empty stein, and went to answer the knock.
***
"What the hell was that?" Zoey asked as we walked back to our quarters, wiping away tears of laughter with the hand that held the stein.
"I think it was a person," I said. "I'm pretty sure it was a life form of some kind, anyway."
"If you say so. I wonder what in God's name she wanted. What language was that she speaking?"
"I'm not sure she was evolved that far. Come on, hurry up, or -- "
Needless to say, by the time we got to the back door to answer the knock, the knocker -- Noah Gonzalez -- had given up and gone round to the front door. I left Zoey there and retraced my steps -- for the third time, before coffee -- and got to the front door moments after Noah had given up and gone round to the back door again.
That's it I thought, I quit. I went as far as the bar, made a second cup of coffee, and vowed not to move another step until I had finished drinking this one. Zoey and Noah must have connected, and worked out for themselves the awkward business of him waiting in the bedroom while she waddled into the bathroom and refilled the stein for him. By the time she came out to find me, carrying my bathrobe, I was putting the finishing touches on the lyrics of a new song.
It goes like this:
God has a sense of humor, but it's often rather crude
What He thinks is a howler, you or I would say is rude
But cursing Him is not a real productive attitude
Just laugh -- you might as well, my friend,
'cause either way you're screwed
I know: it sounds so simple, and it's so hard to do
To laugh when the joke's on you
God loved Mort Sahl, Belushi, Lenny Bruce -- He likes it sick
Fields, Chaplin, Keaton...anyone in pain will do the trick
'Cause God's idea of slapstick is to slap you with a stick:
You might as well resign yourself to stepping on your dick
It always sounds so simple, but it's so hard to do
To laugh when the joke's on you
You can laugh at a total stranger
When it isn't your ass in danger
And your lover can be a riot
-- if you learn how to giggle quiet
But if you want the right to giggle, that is what you gotta do
when the person steppin on that old banana-peel is you
A chump and a banana peel: the core of every joke
But when it's you that steps on one, your laughter tends to choke
Try not to take it personal, just have another toke
as long as you ain't broken, what's the difference if you're broke?
I know: it sounds so simple, but it's so hard to do
To laugh when the joke's on you
It can be hard to force a smile, as you get along in years
It isn't easy laughin at your deepest secret fears
But try to find your funny-bone, and have a couple beers:
If it don't come out in laughter, man, it's comin out in tears
I said it sounds so simple, but it's so hard to do
To laugh when the joke's on you
The barking vision did not return, that day. Within ten minutes, Zoey and I had crawled back into bed, where we would enjoy a sound and undisturbed sleep, and nothing else awful or astonishing was to happen after that until well after sundown.
But -- had we but known it -- the ending of Mary's Place had already begun.
Copyright © 1996 by Spider Robinson
